


Mediocris Fabula : Redux

by aerClassic



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Eventual Romance, For about a second and then it's, M/M, Non AU, Slow Burn, please hold for rewrites, ya boi is a genius and deleted the second half of the story files
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2020-08-13 06:07:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 102
Words: 22,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20169397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerClassic/pseuds/aerClassic
Summary: Hongjoong wouldliketo believe it's all Yunho's fault that they're in this mess—cursed to reenact the stories and fairy tales they enjoyed in their youth—but he did kind of...insult the shaman's reading habits. To her face. In his defense, Yunho was the one who started laughing first.[A story told in 100 to 1000 word drabbles.]





	1. Begin

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you like this little exercise and thanks so much for sticking with it (if you do).
> 
> \- Ash <3

Four weeks away from the next comeback, one of the managers pulls Hongjoong aside in front of his cramped studio with a whispered, “Go wild” and a limitless company card slipped into his waiting palm. At first, he thinks it’s a trick; this is going to be some sneaky way for them to find out where the group sources their snacks and the reason Seonghwa always has a crinkling bag of chips in his duffel.  
  
So, playing it safe, Hongjoong takes the card and runs off towards the nearest vending machine buy seven bottles of banana milk and that one protein bar Jongho likes before they can snatch it away.


	2. Question

Yunho catches him trying to squirrel his tiny hoard of drinks into an even tinier cooler beneath his work desk. “Hyung, what are you doing?”  
  
Hongjoong looks up, beanie sitting awkwardly along the side of his head from where he knocked it against the underside of the desk in his haste to keep his Cold Drinks actually Cold. “Uh — ”  
  
“Dude,” Yunho starts laughing, “Why do you have so many drinks? Planning an allnighter?”  
  
“I’m always planning allnighters,” Hongjoong sniffs indignantly, “But no, manager-nim gave me a company card so I’m stocking up while I’ve got the chance.”  
  
Yunho makes a high pitched noise in the back of his throat. “Someone gave you a _ what_?”


	3. Card

“A card,” Hongjoong responds.   
  
“Like,” Yunho mimes outlining the shape of a small rectangle. “The kind of company card we can buy whatever we want and not have to repay it with interest?”

Hongjoong squints up at him, placing the last of his drinks in the fridge door and straightening the stack of protein bars next to a speaker. “Yes.” Before Yunho can get too excited, he interrupts, “But I’m not sure how much we can realistically buy without getting into trouble.”

“Hyung!” Yunho squats down to his eye level with an exaggerated backwards glance over his own shoulder. “We could sneak out and get skewers with this.”


	4. Charm

“We’re not going to sneak out and get skewers,” Hongjoong tells him point-blank.

“Aw, hyung, why not?” 

“Because I said so,” Hongjoong pushes Yunho’s pouting face away, impervious to its charms after so much time spent in its presence. “Why are you here, by the way? Weren’t you supposed to be spending our free day at home? Everyone else did.”

Yunho wilts forward until Hongjoong relents and lets him curl into his chest like an overgrown puppy. “I was going to but mom called and said they’re all sick with the flu, so I had to cancel and stay here.”


	5. Skewers

“Aw, that really sucks. I’m sorry, Yunho. I know how much you were looking forward to going home.” Hongjoong slips a hand through Yunho’s fringe and over his scalp until he can cup a palm around the back of Yunho’s neck. His dongsaeng only curls in further to snuggle against his chest with his arms wrapped around the waist of Hongjoong’s oversized hoodie.   
  
“You know what would make me feel better?” Yunho mumbles into his chest.

Hongjoong massages against the line of Yunho’s shoulders. His legs are starting to cramp from the weird crouch they’ve found themselves in. “What?”

“Skewers.”

Hongjoong raises his eyes heavenward.


	6. Favoritism

Hongjoong ignores the pathetic whimpering noises Yunho is directing at his back, no doubt rubbing the stinging red hand print where he’d slapped his dongsaeng’s neck for being a brat, and continues his slow march onward to the vending area. 

“Here,” Hongjoong slaps the backlit front of the drink machine. “Pick one and I’ll buy you a couple.”

Yunho scowls even as he keys in the code for a strawberry and melon drink. “You bought Jongho like ten thousand protein bars, I should get more than two measly drinks.”

“How do you know those are for Jongho?”  
  
“Please,” Yunho whines, “Unless you’re about to take up bodybuilding and haven’t told us, those are for Jongho —we all know he’s your favorite.”


	7. Smug

“Wha—Jongho isn’t my favorite!” Hongjoong denies. “I don’t play favorites!”

Yunho freezes with his finger hovering over the keypad for his second drink of choice. “You can’t be serious.”

“As a heart attack.” Hongjoong punctuates the statement with a hand held close to his chest. “I love all of you equally.”

“So if Jongho asked you to get skewers—”

Hongjoong throws his hands in the air. “Oh my god!” 

Yunho only pouts harder, hands placed on either side of his cheeks in a poor approximation of heart touching aegyo. “Hongjoong-hyung only cares about his laptop and our maknae.”

“I do not.”

Hongjoong can feel his resolve slipping as Yunho goes from doing obnoxious aegyo to being an even more obnoxious smug asshole. “Prove it.”


	8. Escape

Since it’s just the two of them, Hongjoong and Yunho make the silent agreement to treat leaving the company building as a John Carpenter-esque Escape from KQ complete with imaginary guns and ear pieces. When the elevator doors open —because Yunho decided it would be fun to hit the button for each and every floor—they pretend to look both ways down the hallways in search of ‘enemies’.    
  
Or managers.   
  
Or that one staff member that pinched San’s cheeks because his dimples were so cute.   
  
“Agent Hong, coast is clear on this side, how are your parameters?” Yunho whispers at him, body curled around the edge of the elevator doorway with a hand held to his ear.

“Clear this way, Agent Jeong,” Hongjoong bites at the inside of his cheek to conceal a smile. “Is parameter even the right word?”

“Dude, how should I know?”

“You’re the one that watches action movies!”   


Yunho’s rebuttal is interrupted by a familiar voice calling from down the hall, “Hongjoong-ssi? Yunho-ssi?”


	9. Spies

“Oh shit!” Yunho screeches before diving backwards against the back of the elevator and hitting the close door button repeatedly with his heel. “We’ve been made, abort mission!”

Hongjoong wheezes laughter against the sleek metal wall. “Yunho, yah, that was just Jimin from the accounting department.”

“A spy! She’s seen our faces!”

Hongjoong laughs harder until he’s doubled over into his knees. “They have life size poster cutouts of us in the third floor break room! She sees our faces every time she uses a microwave!”

Yunho stops his flailing to stare contemplatively at the now closed doors. “Do they really?”

“Yeah.” Hongjoong can’t quite keep his giggling in check, so his next words come out stuttering and stumbling from his mouth. “They made them, like —like two months ago.”

“Huh,” Yunho stops trying to toe off the elevator buttons and sits up straight. “New mission: let’s go see them.”

Hongjoong blinks. “I thought you wanted food.”

“I do want food!” Hongjoong watches Yunho creep up to his side in two long strides and wobbly mouthed pout on full display. “I also want to see how tall they made you.”


	10. Teasing

“Someday Mingi is going to make good on his threat and I won’t have to put up with this abuse.” Yunho mutters in dark baritones under his breath, holding a palm to the place where Hongjoong —gently!—pinched his cheek. 

Hongjoong keeps his mouth shut as the elevator finally opens to reveal the first floor and the doors that lead to the street. He stays silent as they step out into the muggy Seoul air, face masks in place, and turns in the direction of the closest street vendor they all know makes the best pork skewers. 

The knowledge that Yunho would more than likely rather be doing this with anyone other than Hongjoong himself sits like a cold weight in his chest.


	11. Affection

Hongjoong loves his group members. He’s composed song upon song about how much their presence in his life means to him; how much he would give up to make them happy. The reminder that he’s more than likely the least favorite pick out of the lineup when it comes to Yunho or Yeosang or anyone else...it stings.

He tries not to let it affect him when his dongsaengs pick Seonghwa as their favorite without hesitation while he is standing right next to them. He tries to play it cool and unbothered when they flock to Seonghwa’s side to practice girl group dances. Hell, even when Mingi jokes about kicking Hongjoong out of the band so he can be leader, Hongjoong shrugs it off with a grin and a noogie to the crown of Mingi’s head.

Assuming Mingi is bent down far enough for him to reach.

He’s snapped out of his frankly depressing thought spiral by Yunho gently lacing their hands together with a whispered, “Hyung?”


	12. Insecure

Hongjoong clears his throat. “Yes?”

“You got really quiet all of a sudden.” Yunho squeezes his hand. “What’s up?”

“The sky.”

Yunho is giving him the ‘something is up and I’m about to drag it out of you by force’ look that Hongjoong _ hates _ with several passions. “That was a terrible joke and you should feel ashamed.”

“That was a great joke and _ you _ should laugh.” Hongjoong replies. His mask slips off the tip of his nose, but before he can adjust it Yunho is already reaching over to place the edge firmly against his bridge. “Thanks.”

“Mm,” Yunho agrees. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong, Yunho-yah,” Hongjoong says a little helplessly, “I was just thinking about...skewers.”

“Skewers.”

“Yes.”

Hongjoong watches Yunho’s eyes squint at him and breaks into a cold sweat. Shit. “What about skewers?” 

“Um—that they’re...good?” Hongjoong glances back at the KQ Building and contemplates making a break for it so he can avoid this conversation entirely. “Really can’t wait to get some in my mouth, mm-mm protein!”

Yunho sighs before tugging him towards a side alley lit only by the glowing neon of a hotel sign so they are no longer sort of arguing on a very public sidewalk. It’s the kind of image-conscious-conscientiousness that makes Hongjoong want to praise him and give Yunho a gold star for effort. If only he wasn’t also about to try and drag Hongjoong’s own insecurities out into the open and—

Oh.


	13. Hug

Yunho smells like Yeosang’s coconut and vanilla shampoo. Yunho’s hands are warm against the small of his back.

Hongjoong’s chin is apparently the perfect height to rest against the jut of Yunho’s shoulder when he’s pulled into a tight hug. Not an uncommon occurrence considering Yunho’s penchant for being the clingiest person in the dorm aside from San—thank god the two of them agreed to be roommates because Hongjoong does think he’d be able to put up with either of them when he’s trying to sleep—and hugs are hands down his preferred way to settle arguments. 

“What’s this for?” Hongjoong asks, desperate to break the silence.

“Because I can,” Yunho rocks from foot to foot to sway Hongjoong’s smaller torso in exaggerated dips. “You looked like you needed a hug.”


	14. Kids

Hongjoong goes along with it for a moment longer than he should—longer than he’s ever allowed himself in the past and lets the simple comfort soak down into the marrow of his bones before tapping Yunho’s back for release. “Alright, alright, let me go so we can go buy you your skewers.”

Yunho lets go only to hipcheck Hongjoong almost into the brickwork of the building next to them. “_Our _ skewers, you mean.”

“You say that like they’re our children.” Hongjoong snorts. The sidewalk is empty save for a few tired looking men in suits trooping down towards a pojangmacha setup on the side of the road and a clearly uninterested teen sweeping dust from a storefront window. "Like we have joint custody or something."

Yunho wraps an arm around his shoulder with a small sound from the back of his throat. “No way, I don't want to eat kids.” Yunho kicks at a rock that goes skipping off towards a nearby car. "Plus we have enough children in the rest of the group, I don’t think I can handle more of them."  
  
“Yunho,” Hongjoong is glad for the face mask hiding the amused slant of his mouth. “You realize _ you’re _ one of the children, right?”


	15. Listen

“What? No!” Yunho yells, attracting the attention of Bored Teen who gives the pair of them a paling glance as if she’s afraid they’re about to get rowdy in her store. “I am a responsible adult!”

Hongjoong does his best to hide his wheezing laughter behind his palms cupped over his mouth with the mask barrier, but he still laughs so hard his eyes squint nearly shut and he has to stop walking before he falls. “Who’s the one who wanted to play Spies while they snuck out of their workplace?”

“That was all you, hyung.” Yunho sticks his nose in the air. “I was just going along so you wouldn’t feel silly suggesting it.”

“Uh huh. And who’s the one that got jealous because the baby of the group was getting a snack and he isn’t?”

Yunho’s mouth closes with an audible click and a surprisingly attractive flush to his cheeks. “Listen.”  
  
“I’m listening.” Hongjoong replies while tugging his dongsaeng further along the path. “I am all ears, really, tell me all about how you  _ weren’t _ being a bratty toddler earlier.”


	16. Fortune

Yunho grumbles the entire length of the city block, only stopping when they come across a section of lighted tents advertising a collection of tarot and palm readings and another for saju palja compatibility tests. Hongjoong feels a tug on the back of his shirt and looks back to find Yunho excitedly bouncing on his heels, pointing at a tent with no one currently lined up in front.

“Hyung! Let’s go get our fortunes read!”

“What? Why?” Hongjoong stares longingly at the street vendors handing out orders of noodles and lamb and pickled radish slices bigger than his hand. “I thought you wanted skewers.”  
  
“I  _ do _ want skewers,” Yunho holds two fingers up by his eye with a wink. “Come on, live a little.”

"No."

"Yes."

"Yunho, _no_." 

Hongjoong watches Yunho's eyebrows scrunch together and his eyes turn watery and thinks with no small amount of horror that, _oh hell_, he is the world's easiest pushover.


	17. Compatibility

The tent is thick with the cloying scent of incense burning in a brass pot set in the middle of a squatted table where a middle aged looking woman is polishing a crystal ball. Hongjoong immediately thinks she’s one of the cheesy over-the-top ones—dressed in flowing robes with a headscarf tied around her head that features tiny dangling bells—and hopes to god the ‘donation’ she requires isn’t astronomically high. 

There’s a small bookshelf against one side, two square pillows with gold tassles on the ground, and a gimmicky statue of the Buddha waving at them from an end table. Hongjoong grimaces when Yunho bursts out with an overly excited, “Hello!” and the woman—shaman, he should say _ shaman _—startles hard enough that the crystal ball almost slips from her grip.

“Oh, goodness! I didn’t see you two slip in,” she gestures towards the pillows on the opposite side of her table. “Are you two here for a compatibility reading? They’re all the rage these days before you young people decide to start dating.” 

Hongjoong chokes, loses his balance and lands hard against the barely covered concrete. 


	18. Progressive

Yunho is the first to recover by exclaiming, “We’re not together!”

“No?” The woman fans out a collection of cards in front of her crystal. “Because it’s okay if you are, you know. I’m very progressive and the spirits don’t care any which way about what gender you two are, they just guide my hand to the right cards.”

“That’s nice and all but I’m—_ we’re _—it’s not—” Yunho’s flailing, while endearing, is getting them nowhere fast.

“What he means is we’re not together and we don’t plan on being together either,” Hongjoong coughs to hide his discomfort. “We’re in an idol group and want to know if we're going to be successful or not.”

The shaman makes a quiet ‘ah’ sound before leaning over the crystal ball with an exaggerated wink. “I get you. Idol life can be pretty tough, huh? Can’t say anything or else it might make the fans leave. Don’t worry, don’t worry, I don’t speak to anyone but my spirit guides.” She sits back on her heels with a conspiratory grin. “So, what do you want to know about your future ‘together’?”

Hongjoong shares a look with Yunho, clearly this woman made her decision and is running away with it.


	19. Books

While the shaman busies herself with setting up her collection of divining trinkets, Hongjoong feels Yunho nudging his elbow insistently and nodding his head in the direction of the small bookcase with books shoved unceremoniously onto the rickety shelves. Several books are stacked on top of one another, one book sits half-open on the top, and even more are crammed so tightly into the bottom section that he’s not sure if they’ll ever come back out again.

Most fortune readers have their quirks. They have their books of star charts and dream reading on display to show how knowledgeable they are, but these—

Every single one of the books, every cracked spine and spindly glue job, boasts about fairy tales or fantasy stories about romance or, in one kind of horrifying discovery, a harlequin romance novel complete with a glistening, muscular male model holding an equally glistening woman with an ample chest.

No tarot, no fortune, no dream reading, no palm reading—just...fairy tales.

Hongjoong whispers as quietly as he can manage, “Maybe that’s why she’s so obsessed with our love life.”   
  
Yunho starts giggling. Yunho can’t _ stop _ giggling, which sets Hongjoong himself off and they both end up with tears streaming from the corners of their eyes from trying to repress the laughter.


	20. Transport

The shaman is giving the pair of them a narrow eyed glare that could probably strip paint from a building. “Young men, I don’t know what it is that you find so hilarious but I will ask that you not laugh at the spirits’ reading material.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, really,” Hongjoong tries to hold back another snorting sort of laugh and fails. He covers his face with one arm and slaps at Yunho to get him to take over. 

Yunho grabs his fingers tight, Hongjoong can only presume as an anchor against the storm of mirth rumbling through his chest, “What he said. We were just—” Yunho cuts off when he snorts, hard, and mumbles something about Fabio into the curve of Hongjoong’s shoulder.

Hongjoong takes over again while the woman’s mouth grows thinner and thinner. “I’m sorry, I think we should get going,” Hongjoong pulls Yunho to stand. “Yunho, make a donation for wasting this lovely lady’s time.”

Yunho, still snickering quietly, drops a handful of bills from his allowance into the waiting donation box. The shaman glances at it briefly before placing both hands on top of her polished crystal. “If you won’t admit it to me, perhaps you should find out the hard way about what the spirits have in store for you.”

"That won't be necessary," Hongjoong bows deep, pushes Yunho down with him when the idiot keeps facing forward wiping tears away from his face. “Again, we are very, _very_ sorry for wasting your time tonight.”

“And for insulting the books.” Yunho adds.

“No,” The shaman hums, clinks her fingers against the ball. “Not yet. But you will be.”

Hongjoong really, really, really doesn’t want to find out what exactly she means and, still bowing with every step, backs out of the tent with Yunho’s sleeve still clutched tightly in his fist. The sidewalk outside crunches awkwardly beneath his sneakers. 

The sound of the city is suddenly absent. Quiet. There’s no low level buzz of traffic, no street vendors hawking their wares, the bright music usually blasting from the convenience store entrance is turned off. Hongjoong imagines he can hear _ crickets _ and he hasn’t heard those since the time he made a visit to Seonghwa’s family home.

Hongjoong turns around to find they’ve exited into a totally new landscape that is Not Seoul. It’s not any countryside he’s ever _ seen _. 

“Oh,” Yunho breathes beside him. “I never got my skewers.”


	21. Logic

The sky is dark, the same inky black dotted with stars Seoul would have if the city lights ever dimmed enough to show them. Hongjoong spins around to see if the shaman’s tent is still there—it isn’t. All that stands before them is an open field of what might be wheat, a trail cutting through towards some collection of houses faintly lit up from within, and a line of dark and foreboding trees at their backs.

Hongjoong covers the panic by smacking at Yunho’s side and saying, “I _cannot_ _believe_ your first thought is about skewers.”

“Well, my first thought was more about what was in that incense she was burning because we’re clearly hallucinating. My _ second _ thought was about skewers. We’re probably going to have a killer case of the munchies later.” Yunho reasons.

Behind them is the faint sound of an animal howling. Hongjoong gulps and grabs hold of Yunho’s arm—tight. “I don’t think we’re hallucinating, Yunho.”

“Of course we are,” Yunho snorts and shakes him off to poke curiously at the local flora. “We have to be. There’s no other explanation for being in one place and then stepping out into another.”


	22. Cursed

“Maybe we were cursed by the shaman.”

Yunho makes a dismissive noise in his throat. “That’s stupid.”

The wheat is just that...wheat. It doesn’t do anything suspect when Yunho touches it. No disappearing act, no sudden phase out of existence like they’re in a hologram. It just stays wheat.

“Oh,” Yunho gulps and looks over his shoulder. “Hongjoong-hyung?”

There’s a sound like footsteps crunching over dry leaves behind them, an echo from deep in the woods that sends Hongjoong’s hair standing on end and his skin prickling. Even the crickets that had been chirping seem to have gone silent. Hongjoong’s pulse races so hard and so fast he imagines it can be heard by whatever it is that’s stalking its way towards them.

“Yeah, Yunho?” Hongjoong starts to slowly back away towards the dusty trail into town.

Yunho catches hold of his sleeve with nervous, shaking hands. “I don’t think we’re hallucinating.”

“No, Yunho.” 

The forest line explodes into chaos.


	23. Great Beast

Bounding out of the trees on a straight path towards them is a monstrous beast that, at first glance, looks like a mixture of lion and bat. A terrifying blend of two unrelated animals running on all fours with its jaw gaped open to the point moonlight glints off the shining white of its teeth. 

Yunho lets out a scream.

Hongjoong pretends he is not absolutely shitting himself, grabs his dongsaeng rooted to the spot in fear, and forcibly drags him bodily towards the path into town with a high pitched, “Run!”

Whatever the creature is—whatever hellscape of a nightmare it crawled out of—it’s surprisingly slow in its pursuit. Hongjoong can feel the heat of its breath beating against their backs but, too afraid to look back and see how close it actually is, he doesn’t think it’s actually _ gaining _ any ground. Maybe all the dust the two of them are kicking up in their frantic escape is blinding it and slowing it down.

Strangely, the beast only pursues them for as long as it takes them to make the first bend in the trail. When the swaying wheat conceals the entrance to the forest, the sound of ragged animalistic heaving dissipates as if it’s given up the chase. Even the sound of it careening through small shrubbery lining the road stops. 

“Y-Yunho, stop,” Hongjoong pants into his knees, “Stop for a sec.”

Yunho turns back, equally breathless and no doubt as pale as Hongjoong himself, but bounces on his heels like he’s ready to sprint off again. “Hyung, we can’t stop! Did you see the size of that thing? What was that?”   
  
Hongjoong, gasping for breath, finally rips the mask from his face. “I don’t know, I don’t _ want _ to know, but whatever it is has stopped following us so let me breathe.”


	24. Greetings

Yunho is pale faced and tight lipped. “Hyung, you’ve got a scratch on your neck.”

“A scratch?” Hongjoong asks in confusion. He didn’t feel anything scratching his neck, but sure enough when he reaches up to check both sides, his hand comes away with a thin veneer of red against his finger tips. “Oh. I guess I do,” he cranes his head to the side so Yunho can get a better look. “How god awful is it?”

The wince on his dongsaeng’s face isn’t comforting. “It’s bleeding pretty bad. Here, give me your mask so I can try and clean this up.”

Yunho dabs the cotton against his neck in delicate swipes. It doesn’t hurt, so Hongjoong hopes it’s just a shallow mark. Shallow enough that the makeup team can cover it up at least. Though, god only knows if having concealer on his neck will make the gossip train leave the station, ‘male idol caught covering up mystery mark: possible hickeys???’

“That thing must have gotten you with a claw or something,” Yunho mumbles under his breath, still concentrated on wiping away the mess of his neck. “What do you think that was?”

“I’m more concerned about where in the world we are.” 

The road into town is empty except for a lone donkey grazing on hay in its pin. It’s still somewhat dark, but now that they’re not so far away Hongjoong can get a good look at the houses which are—not promising. 

And not anything he’s seen in Korea.

“I think that’s as clean as you’re going to get,” Yunho sighs and hands him his mask back. Hongjoong grimaces at the blot of drying blood right in the center, decides pocketing it is a better course of action than trying to put it back on. “I’m still pretty convinced there was something in that incense the shaman lady was burning in that tent or this is all a really elaborate prank.”

Hongjoong opens his mouth to tell Yunho where he can stick his prank theory when he’s interrupted by a faint, feminine voice calling out, “Hello?”


	25. Dawn

At the base of the road stands a plump woman holding a basket wearing a dress in varying shades of tan leather and could-be-dirt-if-you-squint dark brown. She’s fair complected—a foreigner?—with thick plaits on either side of her neck. Hongjoong wonders if maybe they’ve somehow stumbled into LARPing territory.

Yunho cups his hands around his mouth and yells back, “Hello! Who are you?”

“Marianne!” The woman says, slowly trudging forward to meet them. Her skirt is so stiff it almost looks as if she’s gliding towards them like some kind of ghost. Or demon. 

Oh god, are they dead? Is this hell? Is this what hell is like? 

Before Hongjoong can ask where they are, Marianne gasps loud and falls dramatically to her knees in supplication, basket thrown to the wayside so that a collection of apples roll towards the lone donkey. “Your highness! I did not realize it was you! Please forgive your humble servant for addressing your lordship without proper title.”

Hongjoong blinks. Yunho shoots him a look of confusion that no doubt mirrors Hongjoong’s own.

“Uh,” Yunho squats down so that he’s mostly within her line of sight. “I think you have me confused with someone else.”

“No, your highness, I would know your face anywhere, I’m so sorry for the impertinence.” Marianne sobs. Hongjoong wonders how she’s managing to not get dirt in her mouth and...she probably isn’t. He grimaces. Marianne continues, “Had I known you and your betrothed were out for a stroll, I would have ordered the boys to lay out the good rugs so your highness’s finery would not be made dirty by our clay.”

Yunho sends him a look that says, ‘Help me!!’ but Hongjoong can only shrug in response. This lady was just really dedicated to her role, clearly. 

“Okay, well, for one, he’s not my betrothed.” Yunho gently leads the woman to stand with a palm at her elbow. Marianne looks as if she’s about to either start crying from the gesture or combust, possibly both judging by the red settling in her cheeks and the glossy sheen of her eyes. “For two, we were chased here by some huge animal...thing and now we’re lost.”

Marianne makes a vague sign with her fingers. “Your highness made contact with the Great Beast? Truly we are blessed for you to chase it away from the village.” She curtsies low while Yunho groans. “We are in your debt.”

“You’re not in my anything. Where are we?” Yunho begs.

“Why, the Kingdom of course.” Marianne holds a palm to her breast. “Your highness, I can get the boys to pull out the fine rugs for your walk through our village, it is really no trouble.”

“Um, no, that’s okay,” Yunho hesitates. “Where exactly is the Kingdom? Like, in Korea.”

“Korea?”

Hongjoong decides to step in. “Look, ma’am, we appreciate your dedication to whatever LARP or RenFaire thing this is, but we have to get home by tomorrow morning or else our managers are going to murder us.”

Marianne’s eyes seem to glaze over. “I—what fancy language the royal family uses. I’m sorry but I don’t understand.”

Hongjoong sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose in irritation. If he’d known trying to get information was going to be akin to pulling teeth, he would have just kept walking. Yunho rubs his back in soothing circles while Marianne coos. 

In the distance, the dark of late night is starting to fade into the pinks and oranges of early dawn. Hongjoong is in the middle of trying to explain, again, how screwed the two of them were if they don’t get home when something...strange zips up the length of his legs.


	26. Compulsion

His legs tingle. Hongjoong stops trying to get the point across to Marianne to bend low and scratch at them. Yunho gives him a curious slant mouthed stare that he waves away.

It feels a bit like the time they’d stayed in the practice room too long without a break and Hongjoong had forgotten to hydrate for two hours. He remembers the numbness that settled in his limbs alongside a speckling of black dots across his vision until Yunho had looked over and shoved three bottles worth of water down his throat. 

The longer they stand in the middle of the road, and maybe the longer the sun slowly starts to bleed across the landscape, the tingle gets more intense until it starts to _ burn_.

“Hey, Yunho, do your legs feel weird or is it just me?” Hongjoong asks, rubbing a kneecap that feels like it wants to move backwards. “Damn. Maybe I walked into some poison ivy.”

“Who is ‘Yunho’?” Marianne blinks at them. “Prince Derek, is that a new nickname? How...unique.”

“This is really the worst conversation I’ve ever been a part of, I want you to know,” Hongjoong tells her seriously before turning to Yunho’s concerned hand wringing. “Legs?”

Yunho shakes his head. “I’m fine, hyung. Maybe pull up your pants so we can check? You probably just ran into something poisonous, like you said.”

Hongjoong leans down to roll the left side up. Marianne lets out a mortified wail accompanied by, “Your highness! A princess must keep her modesty hidden! How can you be so brazen in near daylight?”

Hongjoong halts, still stooped, while Yunho starts howling laughter. “I _ know _ you did not just call me a princess.”

The slow inch of sunlight finally reaches their position in the road. As soon as the first rays touch the edge of Hongjoong’s sneaker, his leg jerks backward as if of its own accord. Then the other. Again. _ Again_. 

Hongjoong, horrified, realizes he can’t stop.


	27. Confusion

Yunho is watching him with the same smile as before lifting the corner of his mouth. “Hyung, come on, it was a bad joke but you don’t have to run away.”

“I’m not doing this,” Hongjoong whispers back, harsh. His knees scream when he attempts to walk forward into the sunlight, muscles tensing in agonizing pulses to prevent his forward momentum. “I can’t stop!”

“What do you mean you can’t stop?” Yunho takes hold of the corner of his sleeve with a tug. “Hongjoong, this isn’t funny, cut it out.”

Whatever is forcing him to move is clearly stronger than Hongjoong and Yunho combined. No sooner has Yunho gripped his sleeve than they both get jerked backwards towards the line of foreboding trees at the forest’s edge.

Marianne shouts after them, “I’ll just be getting the rugs out for your highness’ return!”


	28. Chapter 28

Walking backwards was oddly tiring, so between one jerking backward motion of a leg and another, Hongjoong manages to spin back around to face the direction his legs are taking him. He gulps. The _ horrible _ direction they’re taking him.

“I don’t think poison ivy would force you to walk back into the spooky forest where the...thing is waiting for us.” Yunho tells him dubiously. “Are you sure you can’t just stop walking?”

“_Yes_, I’m really goddamn sure I can't stop walking towards the doom forest,” Hongjoong scowls. The next few steps are hard stomps as he tries, without success, to dig his feet into the earth far enough to make them stop moving. “Do you actually think I want to find out where the big monster thing lives?”

“Well—”

“Don’t answer that.”

Yunho huffs, arms crossed but he’s chewing on his bottom lip in that unthinking way he does when he’s especially nervous. “Maybe it’s just a hologram for that lady’s medieval roleplay.”

Hongjoong’s feet kick up faster as the sun rises higher in the sky. “I don’t think a hologram could cut my neck open.”


	29. Chapter 29

Yunho holds tight to his hand as they pass through the field of wheat again, treeline only a few short paces away. Whatever monster had chased them before is conspicuously absent and, even stranger, the damage Hongjoong expects to see in its wake is nonexistent. The wheat stands straight and tall and unbroken. The trees aren’t missing branches or leaves and the shrubbery is all intact, almost as if the beast had never been there in the first place.

If it weren’t for the dried blood on his neck and on his face mask stuffed into his pocket, Yunho’s hologram theory might have held weight.

Hongjoong tries to distract himself from the dread trying to settle into his bones. “So. Prince Derek, huh?”

“Fuck off,” Yunho whines, close to his ear from how tight he’s trying to shove his big body into Hongjoong’s space. “Better than being called a princess and getting screamed at for trying to show off some leg.”

Hongjoong scowls. “I hate this place.”

“Same.” 

In the distance is the unmistakable sound of an animal’s howl—a wolf maybe. Hopefully. Or wait, no, a _dog_ would be preferable to a wolf. Yunho drags in a ragged sounding breath. “Hyung, do you have your phone on you? I left mine back in your studio.”

“Oh!” Hongjoong pulls it from his back pocket. “I do! Holy shit, Yunho, you're a genius! I could kiss you!”

Yunho scrunches his nose up. “Please don’t.”


	30. Chapter 30

Unfortunately for both of them, Hongjoong’s phone refuses to turn on even though he knows for a fact he’d had it at full charge before they left the building. Management had drilled into him the importance of having a way to be contacted in case of emergency or Mingi wandering off to get lost again.

Hongjoong smacks the stubbornly black screen, still being led forward by whatever mysterious force is causing his legs to move. The battery pack is in place and there’s no obvious damage so why it’s decided to betray him like this is anyone’s guess.

“Dead?” Yunho asks.

“Yeah,” Hongjoong sighs. “Don’t suppose the village back there would have electricity and a charging cable?”

“I doubt it,” Yunho takes the phone from him to try his hand at fiddling with it. “Or, if they do, they’d probably pretend they didn’t just to be assholes.” Yunho growls something dark under his breath as Hongjoong’s phonecase creaks ominously.

They continue the quickening pace forward. 

Yunho gives up on the phone and shoves it into his own pocket. Probably for the best since Hongjoong is notorious for losing things. “Where do you think we’re going?”

“Hell.” Hongjoong grumps. His legs ached something fierce and now his arms are starting to feel strange...like they want to bend upwards and back. “I’d say the dorm, but we’re obviously not that lucky.”


	31. Chapter 31

“Obviously,” Yunho agrees.

They continued in silence for a while, ignoring the sound of birds and please-god-let-that-be-a-rabbit rustling in the bushes. Whatever path they’re on is surprisingly easy to navigate; very little trip hazards except for maybe an errant twig here and there. The sunlight that had been chasing hot at Hongjoong’s heels is concealed by the thick overhanging limbs so the force—he refuses to call it magic or something equally stupid—seems to die down a little.

Yunho disappears at some point to relieve himself behind a tree and comes back holding a broken branch to use as a walking stick. Hongjoong rolls his eyes when his dongsaeng spends more time wielding the stick like a weapon to smack at unsuspecting foliage than he does using it for its intended purpose.

The ache in his legs is worse now. His arms are slowly starting to burn much in the same way, so Hongjoong crosses his arms to try and get some relief. Maybe having them bent will make the weird muscle cramps settle down.

Around the next corner, Yunho lets out an excited gasp. 

“A lake!”


	32. Chapter 32

Somehow, in the middle of this dark and mysteriously-not-in-Korea forest, a lake exists in almost preternatural serenity. The water doesn’t move in the wind and reflects the last remaining inklings of dark sky like a mirror. It’s not a big body of water by any means, only as big as maybe the little roadside park that’s near their dorm, but something about it makes the hair on Hongjoong’s arms stand upright.

Yunho is instantly enchanted by it and takes off in a sprint to poke at the shoreline with his walking stick slash sword.

Hongjoong could not be less enthused about the stupid goddamn lake because, at the moment, his stupid goddamn legs are heading _ straight for it_.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me!” He screams when his right sneaker dips down beneath the water and into the sandy bottom. “These are brand new shoes!”

Yunho laughs at him, still holding on to his walking stick and a long reed he’d pulled from the ground. “Maybe whatever was moving your legs just wants to be washed off, hyung.”

Each step in the water makes the burn in his legs subside so maybe Yunho is right. Maybe he just needed to get dunked into some bizarre forest lake and everything will be okay again and they can finally figure out how to get back home.

Except…

“Oh,” Hongjoong stares at his fingers as the numbing tingling from before seems to intensify. “Yunho, I don’t think this is going to wash off.”


	33. Chapter 33

Yunho stops laughing.

“What do you mean it’s not going to wash off?”

Hongjoong holds up his palms for Yunho to see and tries not to show how terrified he is of his friend’s reaction. Each hand is being slowly encapsulated by strange glowing tendrils of Hongjoong didn’t know what. Where the light touched, and he was smart enough to realize it was kind of touching him everywhere like a horrible full body cast, his skin tingled. Not unpleasantly, not like before, but stronger by the second and starting to creep up his neck and over his face.

He manages to get out, “What is hap—” before the glowing whatever the fuck covers his head and everything goes blinding white, sparks exploding against his vision.


	34. Chapter 34

When he comes to, it’s to the sound of Yunho laughing his ass off and tiny splashes that can only mean he’s beating his walking stick against the water in his mirth. Hongjoong doesn’t think that’s really the reaction his dongsaeng is supposed to be having considering he just went through a traumatizing blackout and now everything is at a weird angle.

“Why in the fuck are you laughing at me,” is what Hongjoong tries to say, but all that actually comes out of his mouth is an indignant, “Honk!”

Yunho laughs harder, bent double, and actually collapses on his ass when he can’t hold himself upright anymore. “Dude,” Yunho crows. “Oh my god, you’re a  _ goose _ !”

The sun is fully risen now. Hongjoong cranes his head down and—

He lets out a series of honks that roughly translates to, “I’m not a goose, I’m a swan. Learn your birds, idiot.”

Yunho either doesn’t understand or flat out ignores him to wipe tears from his face. He leans forward to prop his chin in one hand resting against a bent knee. “Ah, if Yeosang were here he’d probably try to roast you. Good thing it’s me with you, huh, hyung?”


	35. Chapter 35

To be fair, Yeosang would probably try to roast him long before Hongjoong turned into a swan. He floats for long minutes until he figures out how to finagle his new legs into swimming across the lake’s surface. He mostly goes in semi-circular zig zags before he gets the hang out it and makes his way towards Yunho lounging on the bank.

Yunho continues to stare at him from the shore. “I know you can understand me even if I can’t understand you. Do you think you can go back?”

“No,” Hongjoong honks in return, a sad forlorn note of longing for his actual body. He pecks at Yunho’s fingers to see if maybe the curse will transfer. It doesn’t.

“Ass,” Yunho huffs at him, but cups a hand around the crown of Hongjoong’s newly acquired head. “I don’t know how we got here, or what’s happening to you, but if I knew how to change you back—”

“You can’t.”


	36. Chapter 36

The voice, male this time, is dark and gravely, like he’s spent a lifetime gargling rocks and eating whiskey. Yunho jolts, arms reaching around Hongjoong’s newly feathered body to hug him tight as if pulling him into a circle of protection.

A man appears as if by magic from behind a tree, wiping dust from his lapels and the bottom edge of his cape. He’s tall and bearded and beady eyed in the worst kind of way. Oddly gangly in the knees as if he doesn’t use them much to walk. 

Hongjoong shuffles in a half step closer into Yunho’s embrace in fear.

“Good morning, your highness,” the man bows deep, cape drooping down in the mud but mysteriously remains clean. “Though I have to wonder why you are conversing with my most favored swan? I do hope you aren't thinking of smuggling it away back to your castle without so much as a by your leave.”


	37. Chapter 37

“Uh,” Yunho blinks, gobsmacked, at the new intruder. “Because he’s not really a swan?”

“Of course it’s a swan!” The man jauntily makes his way over to pluck Hongjoong away from Yunho’s grip and under his own arm with ease. “Just your average, every day, swan,” Hongjoong pecks at the dude’s face in an attempt to get him to let go. Which is gross, because his skin is crazy dry and could use a nice face mask or twelve, gritty beneath his beak. The guy dodges each subsequent peck, teeth clenched in a rictus smile. “Got a mean streak, that’s for sure, but the most precious of my fowl flock.”

“Okay, this is getting out of hand,” Yunho finally stands to his full height—still shorter than this newcomer by several heads but intimidating enough. “The larping was one thing, watching my hyung turn into a goddamn swan out of nowhere is another, but if you mean to tell me that bird isn’t actually Hongjoong then—”

“Odette.” The man interrupts, picking at his teeth with the edge of a nail.

Yunho gapes. “Excuse me?”

“The swan’s name is Odette,” he answers. “So called after our dearest princess, may her father rest in peace.”


	38. Chapter 38

Even Hongjoong has to halt his attempts at pecking himself free to gawp at the twitching mustache adorning the man’s face. No. Way. 

He watches Yunho sag against his walking stick. “Odette?”

“Yes,” the man answers. His fingers dug in beneath the curl of Hongjoong’s wings and he lets out a tiny honk of distress at the creak in his breast. Bird bones are fragile, fucker. 

“Like... _ Odette _ Odette,” Yunho repeats. “Princess Odette like from the stories.”

The man’s mustache twitches again, like a broom swishing crumbs from his face or like he can’t quite figure out how to keep his facial muscles from moving. “Yes, your highness. Now,” his arm tightens around Hongjoong’s body. “May I ask what exactly you are doing here, away from your castle and without your accoutrement of weapons or bodyguards? Surely, it is unwise.”


	39. Chapter 39

Odette.

He was being called—wrongly—not only by the opposite gender and a different name, but by a fictional person at that. Physically, Hongjoong’s brain is smaller now and it's making it difficult to follow his own train of thought. If _ he _ was Odette and Yunho was, apparently, Prince Derek, then that means—

He can’t think of what that means and lets out a tinny wail from deep in his gullet to punctuate the despair. It startles both men enough that they both jump. The arm around him loosens to the point Hongjoong finds he can wriggle out and away from the creepy dude trying to keep him captive; Hongjoong takes the opportunity to waddle back behind Yunho’s legs to hiss at the new man again.

“Hyung, manners.”

He hisses at Yunho, too.


	40. Chapter 40

Yunho ignores him because he’s an ass.

“So, my name is Prince Derek,” Yunho says mildly. “That would make you Rothbart, right? The court magician from our neighbors to the north.”

“Very astute, young master,” Rothbart pretends to bow once more. Though from this angle, Hongjoong can see the scowl of disgust curling his upper lip before it’s wiped away for an expression of happy neutrality. “I don’t believe we have met. How do you know my name?”

It’s said like a threat, something dark and with an undertone of such barely contained evil Hongjoong has to hide his head between Yunho’s knees so he doesn’t have to see it any longer.


	41. Chapter 41

Yunho waves him off. 

“I’ve just heard of you from our—uh—our scullery maids. Or was it the stableboys? Either way, doesn’t matter.”

Rothbart continues to glower menacingly. “In that case, young master—your highness, I do believe you should be getting home, hm? Wouldn’t want to be caught out here in the dark,” His voice lowers several octaves, still gravel rough, “You never know what beasts may be lurking in the shadows.”

“Oh, yeah, for sure,” Yunho smiles back. Hongjoong peeks up from his vantage behind his dongsaeng’s knees to see his knuckles turned white around the thickest part of his stick. “I heard the Great Beast makes a regular appearance out here, maybe I should come back and hunt it down.”


	42. Chapter 42

“Perhaps you should,” Rothbart agrees, voice icy. “Allow me to escort you home, your highness.”

“Oh that’s really,  _ really _ not necessary.” Yunho takes a hesitant step backward, almost stomping on Hongjoong’s delicate webbed feet. “I think I’m just going to hang around for a little while longer and then head back to the, um, castle. Later.”

“Your highness, I insist.”

Yunho burbles nervous laughter, the high pitched one that Hongjoong knows precipitates a retreat from awkward management meetings or catching someone in the shower by accident. He’s heard it several times. At least twice because of the shower thing, back when he still had arms and legs.

“I really think I should stay, thank you, but—”

He’s cut off by Rothbart making a kind of swirling motion with his left arm, cape suddenly blowing from a nonexistent wind. The same glowing tendrils Hongjoong vividly remembers rising from the depths of the lake blast from the tips of Rothbart’s fingers and envelop him in a glistening bubble starting from the ground up.


	43. Chapter 43

Hongjoong tries to grab hold as best he can to the edge of Yunho’s jeans but only manages to clip a tiny section of denim from the edge before he’s blocked off by the horrible magical bubble. He watches in mute horror as Yunho beats against the inside of his prison, yelling something but unable to be heard beyond Rothbart’s transportation magic.

Rothbart laughs, a cruel crackling sound that echoes around the clearing as if it’s bouncing from every jagged edge of the lake’s shore and between the trees. He moves his arms in another circular arc until Yunho’s bubble is shrinking down to a normal size. One last wave of his arm—Yunho still beating against the walls in futile—and the bubble floats higher, higher, over the tree line and away.

Hongjoong screams.


	44. Chapter 44

Well, Hongjoong makes a sad, wailing honk that sounds like all the air being let out of a balloon, but if he were still human he’d be screaming. He stares at the place Yunho was just standing—deep indents of his sneakers in the dirt slowly filling with muddy water, his walking stick dropped to the wayside. He drops the the tiny piece of denim in his grief and it joins the sad pile. 

Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck Yunho is gone and he’s still a goddamned _ bird_. 

Rothbart claps his hands together, satisfied tilt to his mouth, and turns to Hongjoong with his fists propped on either hip. “You see that, princess? Prince Charming has no idea of your true identity and he’s more than likely forgetting all about you as we speak.” 

Hongjoong scuttles away as quick as his legs can carry him back to the water and towards the middle of the lake to escape his cruel, mocking laughter. 

“Princess Odette, when will you give up this game of cat and mouse and finally agree to marry me? The curse will break, you’ll return to your human form forever, and I will rule the kingdom as its rightful King with you by my side.”

The name, there’s something about the name ‘Odette’. Hongjoong can’t put his beak on it, a slip of an idea barely hanging on the edge of his awareness if he could just _ think_.

If only Hongjoong could get back to his human form.


	45. Switch

The view of the world from the bubble is disorienting and strange. Yunho keeps his eyes peeled at the landscape so he can track his way back to the lake and back to Hongjoong. It’s mostly trees in straight lines, like someone had the idea of what a forest should look like without the ability to properly execute it, and a sprinkling of huts in geometric shapes with no discernible roads leading in or away from them. Almost as if the world is being hastily put together as he watches it go by.

Yunho thunks his head against the edge of the bubble again—still holding fast against any attempt to pop it. Not that he would, or should, considering he’s however many feet in the air and traveling at speed.

Hongjoong…

His chest hurts. He left his hyung in the clutches of that-that magical ne’er-do-well while he was stuck in a swan’s body. 

Odette. Derek and Rothbart. Somehow, the two of them are acting out a fairy tale but the events are all out of order.


	46. Chapter 46

Still encased in his bubble prison, Yunho’s mind races with every conceivable explanation for why and how they’ve been sucked into a strange rendition of a Don Bluth knockoff. He remembers watching this particular iteration when he was young, something he caught badly dubbed over on a kids’ Saturday morning channel. Another formless forest passes beneath his feet, knees curled upward so he can hug them to his chest for strength.

Maybe they were just experiencing an extremely vivid hallucination courtesy of the shaman woman’s incense—funny illegal grasses mixed into the blend to send them into a mutual fantasy land. Maybe they were stumbling around in the street as Dispatch and gossip sites took pictures and made fun of them. He regrets teasing his hyung into getting skewers with him, black company card be damned, and he regrets hauling him towards that fortune telling tent on a whim.

He regrets laughing.

A tear, hot, slips down over his cheek which Yunho angrily scrubs away. Homesickness hits him almost as hard as the ache in his bones for Hongjoong’s safety. God, he really hopes this world operates the same as the movie slash fairy tale—they won’t harm Hongjoong until Rothbart tries to weasel himself into the castle during a ball.


	47. Chapter 47

An indistinguishable amount of time passes before the bubble is making a sudden, sharp descent to the ground below and Yunho gets his second glimpse of civilization. He touches down in front of a huge, sprawling estate some distance away from a castle that seems to reach beyond the clouds. It still has a bit of the unreality from before, like someone with only a vague understanding of masonry built the outermost walls. The topmost spire looks like a child’s drawing of a castle. Pointed and triangular cap placed just so on a cylindrical post almost as wide as the castle itself.

The bubble pops.

He winces from the noise of the courtyard coming into sudden focus. 

“Prince Derek,” a woman carrying bundles of linen sighs.

“Your highness!” A boisterous man waving beads about calls out, “Fine day for a strand of pearls for your betrothed, eh?”

“There you are,” A thin man in crushed velvet finery makes his way down the path in front of him, “Oh, Her Majesty the Queen has been just beside herself trying to find you!”


	48. Chapter 48

“Sorry, uh,” Yunho blanks. It’s been so long since he’d seen this movie that he only really remembers the main cast. Himself, Odette, and Rothbart. “You…” he trails off.

The white haired man deflates. “Your highness. You do not expect me to believe you’ve forgotten my name.”

“I—of course not,” Yunho coughs into a loose fist and casts around for any sort of hidden memory. It was Lord something, if only he could think back to that morning in front of his television. 

“Lord Rogers, have you found—oh, hey! Derek, it’s about time you showed up,” A stout young man claps him on the back and Yunho goes stumbling. “Man, you had us all thinking you’d run off to the woods again now that your mother is on the hunt to find you a wife.”

“Bromley, you’d do well to address Her Majesty by her station,” Rogers sniffs. “She is only doing what she thinks is best for her son.”

Yunho watches the two bicker back and forth. “What about Odette?”

They stop. Bromley gives him a sympathetic glance while Rogers fiddles with the fraying edge of his sleeve. “Derek, she has been missing for weeks. We must let bygones be bygones and move on.”


	49. Chapter 49

The timeline doesn’t track. They had arrived hours ago, got caught out by Rothbart’s Great Beast, talked to a local who recognized his hyung as the princess, and Hongjoong had only _ just _ been turned into a swan. Odette could not possibly have been missing for _ weeks _. Not yet.

“What do you mean she’s been missing for weeks? She should have only been gone for less than a day.”

Lord Rogers and Bromley share pained, agonized glances before Bromley is throwing an arm around his shoulders in solidarity or some misplaced show of support. Rogers clears his throat.

“Prince Derek, Odette’s father, the king, was found dead in the forest some time ago. Odette was with him, but her whereabouts are still unknown, for all we know she’s dead too—dragged away by wolves to their den for a feast.” 

“But—”

“Derek, man,” Bromely hugs him a little tighter against his bulging belly, “You have to let her go. We all know how much you loved her”—Yunho inhales entirely too hard here, and gets questionable looks from the both of them—”but she’s gone. Hey, maybe the next princess you find at the Ball will be an even better match and you can move on lickity-split!”

Rogers smacks Bromley over the head with a rolled length of parchment. “Bromley.”

“Sorry,” Bromley frowns, nose tinged pink from the admonishment.

Yunho gasps, an idea forming. “The Ball! When is it?” 

Rogers rolls his eyes, “Young master, are you quite alright?”

“I’m fine,” Yunho answers. “Remind me again though, you know I’m terrible about keeping my schedule straight."

“Very well, it’s…”


	50. Chapter 50

Wind lashes against his face as he urges the horse he’s commandeered from the stable fast—faster—through the forest in a straight line. It doesn’t seem to matter which way he goes, the crumbled castle near the lake is always straight ahead of him so he can only assume it’s impossible for him to get lost. If they were truly living out a fantasy centered around the Swan Princess, then the Ball was where it all ended and the only thing Yunho can think would let them out of this bizarro world.

A day!

Yunho grits his teeth when a vine lashes against his arms and leaves a welt against the skin. He has only a _ day _ to get Hongjoong to the castle before the Ball. With how fast time works here, that could be a matter of four or five hours, already the sky is darkening towards night. To be safe, he’d grabbed a sword and a bow and arrow even though he has absolutely no idea on how to actually wield either of them. He’d been shown the archery club in high school, but watching people effortlessly sling arrows towards distant targets was ten billion times easier than actually doing it.

“Please,” Yunho whispers into the horse’s ears, throat clogging with panic. “Please get me to that lake before the sun goes down.”


	51. And Again

Rothbart stands by the edge of the lake watching him piddle paddle around for a while, like he can’t quite decide if he wants to taunt Hongjoong further or traipse off back to the ruined castle by the edge of the lake. From here, his eyes look vacant and faraway. Like he’s daydreaming. Like he’s tracking a target so distant Hongjoong would have no hope of trying to figure out what it could be.

Not that Hongjoong cares overmuch. The longer he stays in this bird body it seems as if his mental capacity shrinks. Rothbart says something, probably more begging for Odette’s hand in marriage, but Hongjoong is distracted by a streamlined silver flicker beneath the water. 

A fish.

He swims after it unconsciously. Hongjoong only snaps out of if when his beak breaches the water’s surface like he was about to try and catch the fish with _ his mouth_.

“Ew, ew, ew, ew,” He honks out, swimming away from it in disgust as fast as he can manage. “Fucking _ ew,_ what is happening to me?”

Rothbart laughs low and cruel from the sidelines. “Losing a bit of your royal etiquette I see. Soon you will be nothing more than a regular swan chasing fish and crickets, better agree to marry me before you lose the last of your humanity, princess.”

_ Dick_. Hongjoong raises one wing to flick water in a long arc at the wannabe villain.

Rothbart sidesteps the spray of water with ease. “Fine, have it your way.” The man flicks the stick Yunho had been using as a makeshift weapon toward the center of the lake, nearly smacking him in the head with it in the process. “Don’t expect your Prince to show up anytime soon.”

With a last sarcastic parting wave, Rothbart swirls his cape up and over his head and disappears into thin air.


	52. Chapter 52

After Rothbart disappears, it’s as if time speeds up. Hongjoong blinks once and the sky turns pink, sun already making it’s slow dip behind the line of trees. He can’t tell if this is happening in real time or if somehow, thanks to his new body, he can’t parse time passing anymore. Maybe he’s been floating in the same spot for hours without realizing. Maybe he’s been unthinkingly chasing fish and is only just now coming back online from the birdbrain takeover.

Hongjoong shudders. He tries to do math equations in his head, except he hates math, so he switches that with imagining his favorite music program. His favorite collection of synth beats lining themselves up in neat little rows. His fridge back at the office with its hoard of banana milk and Jongho’s favorite protein snacks. He thinks of skewers and tries not to hate Yunho for them.

Skewers makes him think of food and food makes him think of—

Another dark flick beneath the water.

Fish and fish and fish and—

Between one subject and the next, the horizon goes varying shades of pinks and reds and then dark purple as night descends over the tiny lake. He shakes his head to rid himself of the pervasive thoughts.

“I know for a fact I’ve been in this spot for maybe thirty minutes. There is no way time goes by that quickly here,” he whispers to himself, though it comes out as stuttering quacks more than anything. He bemoans even quieter, “I miss being able to tell time.”

Darkness falls exceedingly quick. Already the last rays of the sun are gone, replaced by the soft glint of moonshine. At its zenith, the moon is reflected against the lake like a tiny mirror—bright, then brighter, until Hongjoong sees the same swirling magic tendrils as before rising up from deep beneath the surface to engulf him in their power once more.

This time he doesn’t fight it. Though he does cast a singular thought as they close in around his head, “God I hope this means I get my clothes back.”


	53. Chapter 53

Hongjoong keeps his eyes squeezed tight but he thinks he can feel his toes again, waterlogged from being submerged in the outerbanks of the lake and mud trying to ooze down his socks. He doesn’t want to look—he _ can’t _ look—too afraid that if he does, he’s going to find his legs are still spindly goose feet and his fingers are still feathered. As an experiment, he wiggles his toes. Then his fingers. When those seem to work like they’re supposed to, he reaches up to feel the contours of his face and almost has a breakdown when they touch skin instead of hard beak.

“I’m back,” he whispers, finally opening his eyes to peer down at his reflection on the lake’s surface. “I’m back!” Hongjoong whoops and holds his pants away from his body to peak down at his crotch, “Oh my god have I missed _ you, _ buddy.”

Behind him is a sudden cacophony of breaking twigs and leaves being trampled underfoot until Yunho bursts from the treeline riding a horse. A horse.

Hongjoong gapes at him, still in the water, “Yo, where’d you get a horse from?”

Yunho dismounts, totally ignoring his question, to barrel his way into Hongjoong’s personal bubble and cups his face between two large palms. “Hyung, are you okay? Did he hurt you? He didn’t, right? Tell me he didn’t do anything.” Yunho pats at his face, his arms, his waist, before Hongjoong finally has enough and grabs his hands tight. 

“Yunho, yah, stop.” Yunho breathes raggedly and his palms start to shake within Hongjoong’s grip. “I’m okay, I’m alright, see?”

“Hongjoong,” Yunho’s lips tremble, “Hyung, I was so _ worried_, I didn’t want to leave you, I’m sorry!”

Hongjoong leads them both out of the water before pulling his dongsaeng into a hug and makes soothing noises against his neck. “It’s alright, you didn’t have a choice. You didn’t get hurt either, did you?” Yunho shakes his head, sobs quieting down to devastating little hiccups. “Good. We’ll figure this out, I promise.”

“About that,” Yunho wipes his nose with the inside of his shirt, eyes red and face blotchy. “I think I’ve figured out where we are.”

“Swan Lake, right? The story.”

“Yeah, but the animated version. I only remember bits and pieces of it but this is definitely The Swan Princess from that Disney offshoot.” Yunho adjusts the strap of a quiver of arrows Hongjoong just now notices. He frowns. How come Yunho gets to have all the cool shit? “We have to get back to the castle before you turn into a swan again.”

“What do you mean ‘again’,” Hongjoong recoils in horror, “Once was enough!”

“I know, I know, just trust me and get on the horse. We have to get back to the other castle before daylight.”

“What other castle?”

“The one I—” Yunho scrubs a hand down his face before hauling Hongjoong towards the horse by his wrist. “Please, just get on so we can go.”

Hongjoong allows himself to be herded onto the back of the horse with a pout. “I am your hyung, you’re supposed to respect me.”

“I watched you try to catch a fish earlier, my respect levels are a little low.” Yunho replies, dry, before heaving himself up and over to sit in front. He’s still sniffling somewhat so the effect of trying to appear aloof is ruined.

Hongjoong swallows down the embarrassment of lapsing into his momentary birdbrain. “Ass,” he sighs, but digs his head against the curve of Yunho’s back and winds his arms around his middle to lessen the blow. “Thank you for coming back for me.”

“Duh.” Yunho clenches the hands around his waist tight. “Okay, so the other part of my plan—”

“Oh no,” Hongjoong moans, muffled in Yunho’s shirt.

“Shut up and let me finish,” Yunho whines petulantly while Hongjoong digs a finger into his navel as revenge. Yunho slaps his fingers with a growl. “So, the point where the movie ends is when Prince Derek confesses to a fake Odette at a royal ball and then he has to fight the great beast—”

“Rothbart,” Hongjoong supplies.

“Yes, Rothbart, while the princess is dying. I mean, so far the timing has been all sorts of screwed up, but that was the basic gist I can recall from memory.” Yunho ducks beneath a tree limb too late and gets a scrape on his cheek. Hongjoong winces in sympathy for both the pain and the ass-reaming Yunho is going to be getting when they get back for messing up his face. 

“I don’t like where this is going,” Hongjoong mumbles.

Yunho continues, unbothered, “If I can get you to the castle before the sun comes up, I can confess my love for you early and maybe we can skip all the fighting and hopefully go home.”

“Dude,” Hongjoong says, “That’s gross.”

“Fuck you, did you have any better ideas?”

“No, but, really? A love confession? That’s your grand escape plan?”

“Yes.”

Hongjoong hums. “Alright. Better than nothing.”

“Thanks so much for your support,” Yunho replies sarcastically.

Hongjoong laughs, amused for the first time since they’d landed in this bizarre situation, and places a gentle kiss to the base of Yunho’s neck just to be a shithead. It tingles a bit, like the lip balm he bought once that swore it would plump his lips or like the time he licked a battery on a dare.

The horse disappears.

They plummet down and down and down until—


	54. Chapter 54

“Ow,” Yunho groans long and loud in his ear.

Hongjoong returns the sentiment with a grunt, because holy shit  _ ow _ . Instead of falling the five or six feet from the horse to the ground, it felt as if they fell for the length of a building. Air whooshing through their ears and drying out their eyeballs, or at least it dried out his eyeballs to the point he had to slam them shut, until the pair of them went slamming into a hard surface some nebulaous amount of time later.

“Anything broke?” Hongjoong asks, a tad worried about the answer with the duration of their falls.

“Don’t think so,” Yunho mutters back. His voice has a weird trilling tone to it now that Hongjoong can only hope is the result of falling for...however long that was.

Hongjoong hums, eyes still clenched shut. “Are we in Korea, you think?”

“Doesn’t smell like it,” Yunho sighs. “I’m too scared to look, hyung.”


	55. Chapter 55

Yunho is right. When they left the building back home, outside smelled like hot asphalt and the stench of car exhaust. The street of foot vendors smelled warm and spicy and greasy in the best way—the promise of the best fried dumplings you could put in your mouth along with the mouth watering scent of meat simmering in twelve different sauces. 

The place they landed in the first time didn’t smell like much of anything. The dirt was earthy, but he only really got a whiff of it when he turned into a swan and was suddenly closer to the ground. This second fall…

Everything is scentless. Void. 

Almost unreal.


	56. Chapter 56

Hongjoong keeps his eyes shut because he’s a coward and this entire adventure is freaking him the fuck out. “Yunho, yah, open your eyes and tell me where we are now.”

“Why do I have to look first?” Yunho whines at him, still close to his ear. “You’re the leader.”

“Yeah, but I was the one who got called princess and turned into a goddamn swan back there,” Hongjoong kicks a foot out in what he thinks is Yunho’s direction. Instead, he connects with a lump that shifts weirdly against his toes and Hongjoong immediately scoots back and away—whatever that was could  _ not _ be good news. “Just take a peak and tell me if we should scream or not.”

Yunho says nothing for almost a full minute. “What if we looked at the same time on the count of three?”

“Oh my god,” Hongjoong groans. “Fine, you big baby.”


	57. Chapter 57

On the count of three, the first thing Hongjoong sees when he opens his eyes is a big ass fucking blue bird on its back squinting at him. He screams.

“Yunho! Yunho, holy fuck where are you?” Hongjoong panics as he scrambles up and away from the bird as fast as his legs can carry him across the worn smooth surface beneath him. “Yunho!”

“I’m right here, for the love of all things holy quit  _ yelling _ ,” the bird chatters back at him.

Hongjoong blinks. The bird doesn't make any sudden movements like it's about to peck his eyes out or snip his limbs off.

He inhales.

“Hey, say something else.”

The bird rolls on its side, still narrow-eyed a little from the glare of the sun filtering in through a nearby window. “Something else,” it says sarcastically in Yunho’s voice.


	58. Chapter 58

“Stop laughing,” Yunho whines at him, high pitched and trilling coming from a bird’s vocal chords. “This isn’t funny! I didn’t laugh when  _ you _ turned into a swan.”

“That—that is a—” Hongjoong tries to hold back the cackling but, oh god, this is the best divine retribution the universe could have come up with—“that is a fucking lie. I watched you almost piss yourself on the edge of the lake we were  _ just _ at.”

“Whatever,” Yunho tries to scowl at him, but with his bird’s beak and his bird’s face it just comes off constipated and hilarious. Hongjoong lasts for all of two seconds before the laughter takes over again and he has to squat down to wheeze into his kneecaps to try to contain it. “How did we get here? Wherever here is anyway…”


	59. Chapter 59

“Dunno. Maybe we just got lucky.” Hongjoong wipes away the tears that had slipped from the corners of his eyes to finally take in the rest of the room they’ve suddenly dropped into. 

After the last place, whatever weird version of Swan Lake that had been—the Swan Princess, he thinks, the awkward animated second cousin of the original story—this place is almost a welcome respite. It’s a simple cottage home with a warm fire crackling in the center and a rocker with a heavy crocheted quilt folded in its seat. There’s a small bed, enough for one person and a cat, maybe, with only one small window above a desk. 

It’s homey.

The only problem is that everything in the cottage is _ huge_.

Yunho whistles at the towering book of fairytales propped open in the middle of the desk they stand on. “I wonder if we’re in Jack and the Beanstalk this time.”


	60. Chapter 60

“Maybe we’re in ‘Yunho don’t jinx us the giant tries to kill Jack’ land,” Hongjoong mutters and nudges Yunho away from the book in case it falls. Though now that his dongsaeng has mentioned it, he nervously casts around for any sign of—of—whatever it is that giants do. Didn’t the giant in the story want to grind up Jack into a paste? That had been a thing, right? 

There’s a mortar and pestle in the middle of a table in what he could only assume was a tiny makeshift kitchen. Hongjoong shudders at it.

Behind him, Yunho makes a tiny ‘oh’ sound. Hongjoong turns to find him pointing at a page in the book with the very tip of a wing, still standing too close for his comfort when Hongjoong is pretty sure he couldn’t lift it should the thing topple over. “Hyung, I might know what this world is about.”

“Yeah? What’s your theory?” 

Yunho smirks, which is still hilarious re: beak. “Thumbelina.”


	61. Chapter 61

“Screw this, screw  _ all _ of this, I am out!” Hongjoong yells while he stomps his way to the corner of the wooden desk, peering over the edge to see if any of the drawers are open enough for him to scale down. “I refuse to be another damsel in distress for whoever or whatever is having fun with us.”

Yunho chirps something approaching a laugh. “You’re just mad that I'm going to tell the guys you were Thumbelina and get a new nickname out of it.”

“I already  _ had _ the nickname. You and Mingi like to remind me all the time because you’re both giant trolls.” Hongjoong grumps back. If his legs were a little longer, he could reach the first handle of the desk without issue but the distance between the top of the desk and that first little ledge is...daunting. Especially at this size. “Better than being Snow White like Yeosang, I guess.”

“True. At least Yeosang embraces the title because he’s pretty.” Yunho tip-taps his way over to stand next to him. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking about climbing down,” Hongjoong replies before he’s jolted with a brilliant idea. “Yunho! You’re the bird in this one, can you fly?”


	62. Chapter 62

“Um, maybe? Let me try.” Yunho experimentally flaps his wings a few times which mostly accomplishes two things:

First, they figure out Yunho  _ can _ fly, but he panics and digs the clawed tips of his feet into the desk so that he stays grounded. Easy enough to fix, he just has to unclench and try again— though, getting airborne and staying that way may be a challenge.

Second, the wind he kicks up on the downstroke is strong enough to pick Hongjoong up and topple him over the side of the desk. He doesn’t realize it’s happening until suddenly he’s staring at the blown huge eyes of Yunho’s new bird body getting farther and farther away.

“_Hyung_!”


	63. Chapter 63

Hongjoong doesn’t know how long he falls. It feels like hours, like time inches to a crawl so infinitesimally small he thinks maybe he could count the molecules in the air. He wonders if it’s going to hurt when he lands, if he’s going to break something like an arm or a rib or a career-ruining leg. Part of him hopes he’ll land back home, perhaps falling from this sort of height will propel him back to his home in Korea, with all its various sights and sounds and his music equipment and his Camila Cabello posters, and out of whatever cursed fairytale he’s in now.

He squeezes his eyes tight against the visual of Yunho—the bird version of him—reaching out with his wings like he could somehow catch Hongjoong from way up there.

...Which is super interesting because Hongjoong lands in a pair of arms with a wheezed, “Oof!”


	64. Chapter 64

Hongjoong peeks his eyes open just a crack to see who exactly has caught him and is greeted by smiling visage of a man wearing _ way _ too much spandex. He’s also in possession of some deep dimples, ears that end in sharp points, and a pair of translucent wings.

“Oh,” Hongjoong sighs. “Great, it’s _ you_.”

“You don’t sound very enthused about someone that just saved your life,” the man muses. Beneath them is the unnerving sound of an insect buzzing, which Hongjoong is going to ignore because if he looks then he’s going to scream. A stylized cartoonish bee in a book or in a movie is one thing, but an actual real life version of one? Large enough for Hongjoong to look into its beady little (huge) eyes and see his reflection?

No.

Nope.

Nuh-uh.

“Yeah, well, if you were in _ my _ shoes, living _ my _ day, you wouldn’t be very enthusiastic about not dying either,” Hongjoong says back. The man makes an agreeing sound in his throat, though he doesn’t do much else other than tighten the grip behind his knees and hold Hongjoong the slightest bit tighter against his chest.

It’s a very sturdy chest.


	65. Chapter 65

Hongjoong coughs to cover his embarrassment for noticing. “Can you—can you, uh, take me back up? I have to see a man about a bird.”

“No problem.” The fairy digs his heels into the side of the bee, much like he was spurring on a horse, and the pair of them rise with a loud rumble back to the desk. Hongjoong keeps his eyes planted on Yunho’s worried avian face to save himself from looking down at the long drop below.

Yunho awkwardly reaches for him with the tips of his wings when they make it back to the ledge, though the fairy prince neatly sidesteps the attempt and sets Hongjoong down gently by his waist. 

“What’s your name?” The man asks in a low baritone. “It’s not very often someone so handsome drops into my arms out of thin air.”


	66. Chapter 66

For the first time since they disappeared from the roadside fortune tent, Hongjoong gets a whiff of an actual honest-to-god smell wafting from...somewhere. He doesn’t think it’s coming from the dude’s mouth, but when the fairy prince speaks he can almost make out the scent of paper and ink. It reminds of the time he took a calligraphy class, like decades old parchment finally being dampened by the drip of ink from a pen.

Or maybe it’s more like someone spilled brand new toner out of a printer.

Something finally clicks. 

“Wait.” Hongjoong takes several steps forward to grab the man—Corn-something wasn’t it? Yunho would know—by his shoulders. “You said handsome. Do I look like a guy to you?”


	67. Chapter 67

“Oh my god, hyung!” Yunho bemoans. “Seriously?”

“It’s a valid question!” Hongjoong says back happily. “Dude, uh, fairy guy, do I look like a man to you? This is a very important question because the _ last _ time someone talked to me they thought I was a princess.”

The prince’s eyes darken and he takes one of Hongjoong’s hands from his shoulder to place a kiss against the knuckle above his ring finger. “My name is Prince Cornelius and I would welcome you as _ my _ princess if you’d like, regardless of your manhood.”

Yunho lets out a strangled sort of sound that Hongjoong nearly misses from the rush of blood in his ears. Shit, this guy was _ smooth_.

“Um.”

“What is your name?” Cornelius presses and brings his other hand to rub over the curve of Hongjoong’s bottom lip. His eyes are very green. Tempting. “It would make me very happy to know my love’s name.”

“Hongjoong. Kim Hongjoong,” he sighs, enraptured.


	68. Chapter 68

The smell of ink and paper intensifies.

“Hyung!” Yunho shrills out, scandalized. 

The screech is loud enough that it breaks whatever weird spell he’d been pulled under and Hongjoong rips his hand away from Cornelius’ mouth, jerks his head back so the man’s fingers aren’t so close to his own lips. He can feel the flush in his cheeks, but it’s more out of mortification than the flush of attraction it had been. 

Cornelius smiles, a rueful slant to his mouth. “I see your bird is not as enamored with our union as I am.”

“I’m too young to join a union,” Hongjoong blurts out in panic. 


	69. Chapter 69

Yunho decides to take pity on him by shielding him from Cornelius’ sight with a wing, pulling back until Hongjoong is forced to shuffle into the space between his wing and his chest. It’s rather comfy, all told, like being cocooned in a living, breathing down comforter.

The prince opens his mouth to say something, but is interrupted by a distant voice calling his name over and over again. 

“Prince Cornelius! Prince Cornelius, where _ are _ you?”

The inky scent vanishes.

Cornelius goes rigid before walking like a puppet whose strings are being tugged in twelve different directions to yell out of the cracked open window. “Coming mother!” When he turns back, there’s a rictus grin on his mouth and he says through gritted teeth, “I’ll be right back. I promise to bring an abundance of wedding gifts for you and your mother.”


	70. Chapter 70

“You’re an idiot,” Yunho tells him feelingly after Cornelius takes his terrifying giant bumblebee and leaves through the open window. “What the hell even was that? ‘Oh~Prince Cornelius, my name is Kim Hongjoong, please take me now you stud!’” He mocks.

Hongjoong shoves ineffectual at Yunho’s giant feathered chest. “Leave me alone. You  _ know _ I can’t handle talking to attractive people very well.”

“You talk to  _ me _ just fine.”

Hongjoong lets his face go slack as if to say ‘duh’ and laughs when Yunho playfully bites just shy of the end of his nose. It’s so nice to not be in a bird’s body this go around even if he does feel a little badly for his dongsaeng. Hongjoong flops down to lay flat against the desk.

“So, what’s your take on this one? How do you think we get out?”

Yunho settles down next to him. “I’m not sure, honestly. I still don’t know how we dropped from Swan Princess land in the first place. Maybe we went off script enough that the illusion broke?”


	71. Chapter 71

“Maybe,” Hongjoong muses. 

It’s as good a theory as any except something about it doesn’t quite make sense. He and Yunho might have been off script, but the world around them seemed to run on their own predetermined little loops just fine. Even the pursuit of the Great Beast back at the beginning of all this seemed like a predetermined event—as if Rothbart was supposed to be on the attack at that given moment even if his target’s location was rearranged, lasting for as long as it needed to get the story moving.

If going off script was going to shatter the illusion, then why did they suddenly disappear from the horse—

A light bulb flickers on in his head and Hongjoong suffers a full body cringe so intense he almost want to roll himself off the desk again to escape it.


	72. Chapter 72

“Yunho, I—uh. I might have figured out how we dropped out of the last place,” Hongjoong finally manages to croak. His friend doesn’t answer. By the motion of the even breathing in Yunho’s chest, he can only his dongsaeng has fallen asleep. Might not be the best thing to do in a fantasy world, considering.

“Yunho,” Hongjoong bats at his beak until he sees Yunho starting to stir again. “Buddy, come on, wake up and smell the roses. I have an  _ idea _ .”

“Whazzah—wha?” Yunho slurs. It comes out in tiny little chirrups that’s so fucking adorable Hongjoong almost has to physically hold his chest together so his heart doesn’t fall out. 

“I said, I have an idea on how we get out.”

“Oh!” Yunho perks up. “How? Wait, it’s not falling out the window or something is it? Like Inception?”

“I really don’t think this place works like Inception or else I would have woken up when you blew me off the desk.” Hongjoong deadpans. He regrets it almost immediately when Yunho flinches and hangs his head low in apology. “Anyway, I just have to kiss the prince.”

“That’s a really flimsy excuse, if you wanna mack on him just mack on him,” Yunho says dubiously. “I’m not going to stop you.”


	73. Chapter 73

“I don’t want to make out with him,” Hongjoong hisses and it’s only a little bit of a lie.

“I’m just saying if you did—”

“I don’t!”

“But if you  _ did _ , I’d support you,” Yunho continues on blithely. “I accept your homoerotic agenda.”

“I really fucking hate you sometimes, you know that right? Like, a lot.” Hongjoong debates the merits of trying the shove Yunho off the desk to give him a taste of his own medicine if not for the fact Yunho could easily flap his arms and float back to safety. “I meant, I just have to kiss him for us to get out of this fairy tale before something awful happens.”

“How do you know?”


	74. Chapter 74

This is where Hongjoong stumbles in his explanation, because it’s one thing to theorize kissing a stranger and another to admit his stupid peck to Yunho’s skin was the catalyst for their sudden departure. “Can’t you just trust me?” is what he says in lieu of answering the question.

Even as a bird, Yunho’s gaze is hard when he says, “Hongjoong.”

“That’s hyung to you.”

“Stop being a brat and tell me.” Yunho shifts his head low enough to rest the point of his beak directly in the middle of Hongjoong’s forehead. “Or else.”

“Or else you’ll peck my brains out? What the fuck, man,” Hongjoong whines back. Yunho presses the tip harder against his skull. “God, fine, remember how you said all we had to do in the last place was have a grand public proclamation of your love for me?” Yunho hums but keeps his beak unnervingly still. Ass. “I think maybe the real reason we left was because I kissed you. Not like  _ you _ you, but Derek you. Because I was Oddette at the time.”

Yunho jerks back. Hongjoong sighs in relief from the release of pressure from his stupid beak against his head. “You didn’t kiss me, though. I would have remembered.”  
  
“I kissed your neck while we were on the horse. As a joke!” Hongjoong is quick to explain when Yunho scoots farther away. “It was a friendly peck to be funny! And then suddenly we were  _ here _ .”


	75. Chapter 75

“I guess that makes sense,” Yunho says apprehensively. 

He’s still standing farther away than Hongjoong is used to and tries not to feel hurt by it. They’ve always been close, even before debut, and Hongjoong has definitely kissed his cheek on more than one occasion. Admitting to placing a tiny little smeck against his nape shouldn’t be making his dongsaeng this standoffish. 

“Yeah,” he answers morosely and picks at a smudge of dirt clinging to the fabric of his pants. It’s the only reminder that they’d been anywhere else today, even his shoes were bone dry after being submerged in a lake not too long ago. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything.

“So what are we going to do? Just hang out here and wait for that greasy sleazeball to romance you again?” Yunho scratches at the desk’s surface. “Sounds boring.”

“You’re literally a talking blue bird right now, this is the least boring thing that’s happened to us in years.” Hongjoong scowls at the mud caked into his jeans that’s refusing to budge. They were expensive, dammit. “You must really not like Cornelius to be calling him a sleazeball.”

Yunho avoids the accusation by announcing the sky turning dark again; like the last area, the passage of time goes by quick with no real rhyme or reason.


	76. Chapter 76

Once night falls, time passes syrupy slow—long enough that he and Yunho give up trying to wait out the morning and snuggle down together against the bottom of the windowsill with Hongjoong tucked beneath a wing. It’s warm, which he knew already from Yunho’s protective stance earlier, and if he leans his ear just right against Yunho’s chest he can just make out the fast beat of his heart. A steady thump-thump that lulls him to sleep.

Hongjoong’s dreams are disjointed and weird. He dreams of Cornelius’ face gazing at him through something thick and clouded like fog. Flashes of dancing on a boat and on a stage; of a giant rat decorating him in old lace and pearls. 

He dreams of Yunho, as himself and not as a bird this time, folded into a heap somewhere dark and damp with a jagged thorn through his side, blood slowly oozing onto the dirt.

The last one is awful enough that Hongjoong startles awake in a cold sweat, bile blocked by a lump in his throat, to find he’s no longer tucked away beside Yunho’s warm side. He’s no longer on the _ desk _.

Hongjoong is wrapped in a blanket on a lilypad in front of a makeshift leaf boat with a banner that reads:

_ Los Sapos Guapos. _


	77. Chapter 77

“No,” Hongjoong whispers in horror. “No, no, no, where the hell am I?” He cups his hands around his mouth. “Yunho! Yunho, where are you? Answer me!”

“There’s no ‘Yunho’ here, my little castanet,” a croaky yet undeniably female voice giggles next to him. “Is that the name of your fairy prince? Bah! Who needs him when Mama can do so much more for you!” 

Hongjoong bites the inside of his mouth so as not to scream when he’s confronted with the image of a giant frog with anatomically impossible breasts and hair dressed in a miniskirt and bizarre high heels. It smiles at him—_ she _ smiles at him and gently leads him towards the boat with clammy fingers.

“Come, come, let me introduce you to my darling sons—Mozo! Gringo! Grundel! Say hello to our newest member.”

Three toads dressed in cartoonish clown getups hop out of seemingly nowhere, either having been lying in wait for Hongjoong to wake up or only existing once someone acknowledged their existence. Both scenarios are horrifying and Hongjoong tells himself to stop thinking about it. They line up to wave, the last one making a point to sigh dreamily and blow him a kiss.

“I already have a group,” Hongjoong tries. “We’re about to have a comeback, so, you know, I’m going to be way too busy to join you guys on your—”

“Nonsense,” she smacks next to his ear, still gripping his shoulders tight. “We’re going to make you a famous singer, like us.”

Hongjoong swallows back a panicked whimper. 

Where was Yunho?


	78. Good Question

Yunho wakes up.

The first thing he notices is the heat of Hongjoong’s body gone missing from his side. The second—arguably the most important—is that a dog’s snout is half-way across the desk in front of him and there are teeth the size of his arms gaped at him while the thing growls.

“Good doggy,” Yunho chirps and starts slowly edging his way to standing on shaking legs. “Nice doggy. Please don’t eat the super not delicious at all birdy.” The dog’s eyes dilate just the slightest. “I will give you the worst case of heartburn, please be sweet.” Yunho begs.

The dog apparently loves heartburn because in the next second it howls a long note and lunges forward to try and snap Yunho within its jaws. Fight or flight instincts take over and Yunho flaps his arms as hard as he can to rise up and over the dog’s head, well away from danger even as he screams bloody murder.

“Hero!” An older woman smacks the tip of the dog’s snout with the rolled end of a newspaper. “Leave the poor dear alone. We’ve got enough on our plate with our Thumbelina missing.”

If Yunho could stick his tongue out, he would. Just to taunt the droopy eyed monster still growling low in his throat at Yunho perched at the very top of a bookcase.

“Alright, love, shoo shoo through the window." The old woman motions Yunho down to the same window above the desk he was just on. “Hero, be good. Heel.”

Yunho waits for the dog to plop its heavy head on the ground before he even thinks of attempting escape, zooming through the opening when he’s sure Hero won’t be able to jump at him in time. He has all of thirty seconds to breathe a sigh of relief when he hears the distant call of Hongjoong yelling his name.


	79. Back

“Ma’am, I cannot stress enough that I am  _ already _ in a musical group. There’s a six year contract and everything,” Hongjoong attempts again but to no avail. The frog—or is she a toad? He’d never learned the difference—shrugs one shoulder and flicks the huge fall of her hair disinterestedly over the other. 

“And I am almost certain they don’t appreciate your talents like we would,” she grins. “My son Grundel in particular would love to get to know your...musical abilities.”

The toad who’d blown him a kiss earlier makes another lascivious wiggle of his eyebrows that curdles his stomach. Eugh. Not a chance in hell friend, Hongjoong thinks to himself. The collection of lilypads behind him has a promising escape route if he can somehow jump to the one that looks a little loose without arousing too much suspicion. 

“Well, in that case, what if I show you guys some of my moves?” Hongjoong hops to the first green leaf with a grin while the trio of male toads clap excitedly. “How about some music?”

He’s not sure where it comes from, but as soon as he makes the request the sound of a fast paced latin beat starts blaring from somewhere behind or beneath the weird leaf boat. Hongjoong pretends to dance as the mother frog begins to sing. In actuality, he’s inching his way towards the lone lilypad just on the cusp of floating away.

Finally, concealed by a sudden influx of different animals and insects lining the shore of the tiny stream they float on attracted by the music and the bass thumping from the boat, Hongjoong manages to slip onto the loose lilypad and shoves himself as hard as he can away until the stem finally snaps free.

It’s a relief to be out of earshot and out of eyesight until the stream picks up speed and the sound of the brook burbling louder reaches his ears. 

“Oh fuck me sideways, really? Really?”   
  
There’s a goddamn  _ waterfall _ .


	80. And Forth

Yunho finally tracks Hongjoong by the sound of his panicked yelling and finds him clinging to some kind of water plant careening towards a drop off that’s probably going to either drown him or break something. He’s barely gotten the hang of his wings, only holding a tenuous control on staying stable midair, but he points himself towards his bandmate as fast as his wings can carry him.

“Hyung!” Yunho calls, “Hyung, what can I do?”

“Unless you can lift me, I don’t know,” Hongjoong answers, paddling his arms on either side of the lilypad. It’s an exercise in futility because the current is pulling him faster and faster downstream. “Grab the stem maybe? See if you can drag me back!”

Yunho grips the end of the greenery in his beak and tugs with all of his might. Miraculously, after several heart stopping moments where it seemed like Hongjoong was going to totter off the pad into the water or the current was going to suck him under, they manage to get to the closest shore unscathed and only a little bit wet.

Hongjoong’s lips wobble when they finally catch their breath and he hugs Yunho around the neck to hide his tears, shaking like a leaf. “Yunho…”

For the first time since he changed, Yunho laments not having hands so he can hug Hongjoong in comfort. His wings can only convey so much—as much as the whole group tends to clown Hongjoong for being kind of dorky, he’s still their leader. Hongjoong has always been there for him and it’s a sickening feeling that he can’t return the favor now.

Yunho sweeps his wings close together to shield his hyung from view. “I know. I’m sorry I wasn’t here but you’re okay. We’re okay, Hongjoong.”

At some point, he should probably admit that he’s—


	81. Back Again

Hongjoong keeps his face buried into the soft feathers at the base of Yunho’s throat, barely standing upright from his knees quaking due to the adrenaline rush of finding safety after almost going head first over a tiny waterfall. The feathers crumble under his fingers and Hongjoong hopes it doesn’t hurt. God knows what ruffled feathers actually feel like considered his stint as a swan was relatively painless. 

“Thank you,” Hongjoong manages to choke out. “Yunho, how did—”

“There you are!” They jump apart at the new voice. “I’ve been searching all over for you, Hongjoong,” Prince Cornelius interrupts from his perch on the still terrifying giant bumblebee hovering in midair. The scent of new ink on old parchment comes with him. The prince dismounts with a ridiculous helmet held under in the curve of his elbow. “I’m here to take you back to the Vale to introduce you to my parents before the first Frost.”

Hongjoong shares a look with Yunho. “Now or never?” He questions under his breath.

“Now or never,” Yunho agrees before nudging him forward behind the knees with the tip of one wing.

Hongjoong steels his resolve—takes one deep nerve-steadying inhale—and stalks close enough to grab Cornelius by his stupidly attractive face to plant a kiss to his mouth. 

Nothing happens.

Hongjoong kisses him two more times just to see if there’s a delay but still—nothing.


	82. Chapter 82

Hongjoong stares in mute horror at Cornelius’ eyes going wide and the dopey grin taking over his mouth. “So, that was a thing that didn’t work and we’re not going to talk about it. How’s the weather? Let’s talk about the weather.”

“Come to the Vale with me,” Cornelius says instead, which is not at all weather related. Fucker. The prince’s hands are wide and strong when they grip at waist. “Marry me.”

“Little fast!” Hongjoong yelps and wiggles free to scoot back into the somewhat safer circle of Yunho’s wings. “How about you go to the wherever it is to butter up your parents about me and Yunho can fly me there later.”

Cornelius frowns. “Why?”

“Where I go, he goes,” Hongjoong tells him in as serious a tone as he can muster. 

Cornelius eyes the two of them until he snaps his fingers for the bee to start its wings flapping. “I’d have to ask permission for his entry first. I can’t bring outsiders into my ancestral home even if they are friends of my future spouse.” 

“That’s fine,” Hongjoong waves him off. “I need to return home to—to mother and let her know about my future wedding. You can find me again back at the cottage.”

Cornelius leaves with one last squinted glare at Yunho and the smell of ink goes with him.


	83. Chapter 83

“Well, that went over like a lead balloon,” Yunho says in a tone that suggests he’s _ highly _ amused by the whole exchange.

“Shut up.” Hongjoong growls back and scrubs at his mouth with the back of his hand. He’s kissed plenty of people by this stage in life, but there’s something particularly foul about kissing a dude he barely knows—a dude that’s barely real in the first place. “At least now we know the kissing theory is out.”

“True.” Yunho shakes his body to smooth his feathers back out. “How’d you get out here anyway?”

“That’s the thing, I have no idea! I just woke up and suddenly I was on that lilypad with a bunch of freaky toad people singing at me.” Hongjoong shivers at the memory of the clammy frog fingers touching his skin. 

“Better than waking up to a dog trying to eat you,” Yunho sighs. “Side note: flying is a lot easier than I thought it would be.”

The dream of Yunho crumpled and bleeding out flashes across his vision and Hongjoong is on instant high alert. “Are you okay?” He shuffles feathers here and there on Yunho’s chest to look for puncture wounds or sign of injury. “It didn’t bite you or anything did it?”

“Stop, that tickles,” Yunho giggles. The laughter comes out bright and chirpy and cute and the fear pulsing in Hongjoong’s veins subsides the tiniest amount. “But no, it didn’t bite me. Thumbelina’s mom let out of the window before it had the chance.” Yunho sighs. “She was nice. I think she was making a pie.”

Hongjoong drops down into a squat with his head cradled in his palms. The last however many minutes of adrenaline and disappointment and panic taking their toll on his poor heart. Pie makes him think of sneaking candy into Wooyoung’s pockets when management looks away and the snack bars he buys exclusively for Jongho because their maknae mentioned they were his favorite.

“Yunho, I really want to go home.” He admits between the gap of his fingers.

“I know hyung. Me too.”

“I’m ready for you to not be a bird, it’s weird talking to you.” 

“Again, me too,” Yunho says with intensity but he bats at Hongjoong’s shoulders lightheartedly. “Do you want to fly back to the cottage?”

“Actually, can we walk for a little bit?” Hongjoong thinks back to their first reality show where he bungee jumped off a building and the way the height made his everything shake in fear. “I think if I fly around on your back right now I might upchuck everything I’ve ever eaten.”

“That’s fine.”


	84. Chapter 84

They end up making friends with a handful of tiny beetles with squeaky childlike voices offering to escort them back home. The sentiment is sweet, but they’re still actual lifelike beetles with super scary fuck off pinchers attached to their jaws and sometimes, apropos of nothing, like to make chittering noises that makes Hongjoong’s skin crawl. 

To avoid thinking about the insect children’s petrifying appearances, Hongjoong decides to go over their theory again. “So, the kiss didn’t work.”

Yunho snorts. “Nope. Neither did the other two.” He sounds pissed about it.

“Who pissed in your cheerios?” Hongjoong laughs. “I told you I was going to and you pushed me at him!”

“Nothing, nobody. Forget I said anything,” Yunho trots faster until he’s a not insignificant distance ahead of the group. “Continue.”

Hongjoong is about to call him out when a huge beetle pops out of the tall grass along the path wearing a top hat and spats. “Good evening! Berkeley Beetle, at your service.” It bows at them.

“That’s a bad guy.”

“No good!”

“Oh no, we should leave!”

The kids (?) all start murmuring over each other and back away. One of them continues, “Thumbelina, don’t listen to him!” 

Great. That’s one mystery solved, he was still Thumbelina to everyone but the prince.

Berkeley bulldozes on, “I’m a connoisseur of sweet nectars, a designer of rare threads, and a judge of beautiful women.”

“That’s amazing, truly,” Hongjoong grimaces. “But I’m not a woman so move along please.”

The beetle stops moving, its little beady eyes go disturbingly grey before flashing back to a deep black. “Let me make you into a star and I’ll show you the way home.”

“‘Home’ home?” Hongjoong perks up. Yunho, silent for this exchange, shakes his head violently in the background and mimes ‘no-go’ motions with his feathers. “What would I have to do?”

“Only a small dance number at my _ very _ exclusive club,” the beetle simpers back. “In and out in no time.”

Dancing he can do. Dancing is what he does every day since he signed on to KQ Entertainment. “Deal.”

Berkeley cheers while Yunho deflates.

“Hyung, you shouldn’t go off with weird bugs—”

“Yunho, just trust me.” Hongjoong grins at him. “I got this.”


	85. Chapter 85

Hongjoong does not, in fact, ‘got this’.

The beetles dress him up in a fucking insane costume made up of discarded butterfly wings and the molted remains from at least three other insects. He’s pretty sure they stuck  _ spider legs _ to his back. He’s trotted out to a small stage centered in a close approximation of a jazz club. There are miniature tables and chairs scattered about the room filled with even weirder bugs he’s never even seen before. National Geographic would have a field day.

Music wafts from...somewhere. A lot of things in this place don’t seem to make much sense or really just obey any laws of physics. Standing center surrounded by lightning bug floodlights, Hongjoong is reminded—again—of the dream he’d experienced just before he whisked miracled away to the frog band’s territory. Anxiety makes his hands shake, sends tremors down his legs, and even though he told Yunho to just wait for him outside on a nearby tree branch Hongjoong still wants to run out and check that he’s there. That he’s whole and okay and not injured.

Berkeley spins him around while Hongjoong is so lost in his own head and it sends him tripping over the hem of his dress and the costume—the godawful tacky amalgamation of body parts glued together—falls to pieces. He barely hears the taunting from the crowd when they realize he’s not whatever creepy crawly he was supposed to be and only just manages to scrape away the last of the chitin on his way out the entrance back into the daylight. 

He can hear the click of pincers and fibrous legs under the tittering and is glad to get away.


	86. Chapter 86

Yunho, whole and hale, greets him outside and they huddle close for comfort again. It’s getting dark, too dark to fly and too dark for either of them to want to chance walking through the underbrush again.

“I told you that was a bad idea.”

“I know,” Hongjoong holds on tight to the collection of soft down on Yunho’s chest. “Thought it would be worth a shot though.”

Yunho doesn’t mock him for it like Hongjoong expected. Night falls quickly. Too quick. It flickers brightly to day for only a brief moment before the sky settles back to deep dusk.

Hongjoong takes it all in with mounting apprehension. “What if we never get home?”

“We will.”

“Yunho, what if we don’t though? What if we never figure out what the trick is to make it out of here?” Hongjoong sucks in breaths through a too tight airway. A common theme at this point. “Yunho, what if—”

Yunho shushes him with a gentle nuzzle to the top of his head. “In the movie—”

“Not this again,” Hongjoong groans.

“In the movie,” Yunho continues. “Thumbelina goes to work for a field mouse who tries to sell her slash marry her off to a mole with a lot of wealth.”

Again, the dream spikes across his vision. Maybe he saw this version of the tale when he was a kid and it’s just taking a while for his brain to catch up and remember. “And?”

“And she runs away in the middle of the wedding. The movie ends when she sings a song to wake up all the fairies in the Vale.” Yunho whistles a sweet note. “I think it’s to announce the coming of spring.”


	87. Chapter 87

“It’s barely autumn now. Are you telling me we have to be here until spring?” Hongjoong slaps his head into his hands. “We’re going to miss the comeback!”

“Hyung, I hate to tell you this but if time is working the same as it is back home, then they’ve probably already reported us as missing persons,” Yunho smooths a comforting wingtip down over his back. “The comeback will have to be canceled.”

“We worked so hard for this though,” Hongjoong heaves unsteadily through his mouth, already devastated for failing his members like this. “I can’t believe I’m going to let everyone down.”

“I’m here, too.” Yunho tells him gently. As much as Hongjoong would like to take comfort in it, Yunho being here doesn’t take away from the fact Hongjoong himself is supposed to be the unshakable rock foundation the group stands on. He’s not _ allowed _ to disappear. 

“You’re not the leader,” Hongjoong reminds him. “I’m supposed to be—I’m supposed to be management’s scapegoat if anything goes wrong. They’re going to think I abandoned the group and take it out on the members...like Wooyoung or San or Seonghwa…”


	88. Chapter 88

“Is that what you put up with? Being the scapegoat?” Yunho asks him harshly.

Hongjoong pushes back the well of affection he has for this ridiculous boy and his too protective nature. It threatens to choke him most days, but usually he can swallow passed his feelings and treat Yunho like everyone else. He’s not allowed to play favorites either. “I mean, being the leader is not _ that _ bad. I usually just have more meetings than you guys normally do, but if something goes wrong or we’re late on a vocal submission then—yeah, I get yelled at. Better me than you guys.” Yunho holds him tighter against his body. “It doesn’t happen very often, I swear! Don’t worry!”

They sit in relative silence for a long time while Yunho stews. Hongjoong feels a little guilty for making his dongsaeng worry but...the comeback meant a lot to all of them.

Yunho, out of nowhere asks, “What if we find the field mouse?”

“What?”  
  
“What if we find the field mouse so you can start that part of the story while I try and track down the Vale of the Fairies? It shouldn’t be _ that _ hard.”


	89. Chapter 89

“But—”

“No buts, hyung, we need to get this thing finished as fast as possible. Trust me.” Yunho flings Hongjoong’s own words back in his face with a smug grin. Or what would be a smug grin if he still had lips and mostly comes across as a constipated bird.

“I always trust you.” Hongjoong admits.

Yunho lets his eyelids droop, a clear indication of disbelief. Hongjoong bites the inside of his cheek to stop from laughing. “Fine, I trust you when you’re not conspiring against me with San or Mingi because both of them are villains.”

Yunho harrumphs. “You know they only mess with you because they both have crushes on you right? It’s _ embarrassing_.”

Hongjoong boggles at him. “I—wha—what? Excuse me?”

“Oh so...you didn’t know.”

“No!” Hongjoong chokes. This has to be a prank. No way in hell is that real, Yunho is just trying to distract him from his piss poor plan.

“Anyway—”

Hongjoong reaches up to bring Yunho’s bird face down to his level. “Who else has a crush on me? Like an actual one?” 

Yunho blinks once. Twice. “Anyway, as I was saying—”

“Dude.”

His friend’s chest shakes with repressed laughter. “I’ll be right back, I think I know where to take you, but let me scout it out first.” With that, he flicks his head out of Hongjoong’s grip and flaps his wings in one smooth motion. “Stay here, don’t move!”

“Yunho!”

He ignores Hongjoong’s yelling to flick his wings faster, wobbling dangerously in midair for one heart-stopping second and flies due west.


	90. Chapter 90

Hongjoong pouts, arms crossed over his chest and back against the rough bark of the tree.

Left to his own devices like this gives him time to consider the newest revelation. San and Mingi probably just have bad cases of hero worship parading as a mancrush instead of something that’s actually concrete. It would be cute, he supposes, if they were real tangible feelings he could tease the pair of them over. San must have just said that to Yunho to...what, make him jealous? Annoy him? Some other excuse considering San was almost definitely doing something with Wooyoung on the downlow and Hongjoong was not going to get in the middle of that.

“A hot knife couldn’t get between those two,” Hongjoong mutters under his breath, dark and only a smidge jealous they found each other.

Any other thoughts are drowned out by the drone of stuttering insect wings fluttering in the chill air. It’s Cornelius again, somehow having found him hanging around on a branch instead of in the relative safety of the cottage, riding the back of the bee that looks droopy from the sharp bite of winter.

“I see your friend failed at returning you home,” the prince mocks.

The scent of ink and parchment returns, but this time it smells hot—almost like a printer that’s been running for too long and the pages are starting to stink from the friction.


	91. Chapter 91

“We decided to make a pitstop at the club,” Hongjoong plasters a friendly smile on his face and hopes it doesn’t look as deranged as it feels. “You know how it is, sometimes you just have to get your groove on.”

“Perhaps you just have an inexperienced bodyguard,” Cornelius directs his bee to land on the very tip of the branch. It lists to the side on weakened legs before righting itself with a sad vibration. Hongjoong almost feels bad for it.

“No, he’s pretty great. One time he went to a haunted house and serenaded the ghosts instead of screaming.”

Cornelius removes his helmet with a sigh. “That doesn’t sound very brave to  _ me _ .”

“Screw you, I’m plenty brave,” Yunho trills at him. 

Oh thank everything good in the world, his dongsaeng was  _ back _ . “That was quick.”

“The yard is really small,” Yunho laughs. “And there’s only one boot half-buried by the shed.”

“Hear that, Prince? Yunho found the  _ boot _ .” Hongjoong flicks his bangs to the side dramatically. “Totally awesome and capable bodyguard behavior right there.”

“It...really is not.” Cornelius purses his mouth. He advances steadily down the branch. “Hongjoong, you should really come with me. Don’t you want to be married before the long winter? Before the frost?” He sneers over at Yunho. “And finally rid yourself of this useless songbird.”

“Yunho is not useless,” Hongjoong growls in reply. It’s one thing to insult Hongjoong himself, but Yunho? In particular? Cornelius better be ready to have some Thumbelina sized justice shoved up his ass. Before he can take a swing at the smug fuckface in front of him, Yunho snatches him away by the scruff of his hoodie to fly them upwards and away.

“No fighting,” Yunho admonishes. “You’ll hurt your knuckles.”

“He  _ insulted _ you,” Hongjoong grumps, arms crossed while they watch Cornelius turn into a dot in the distance. “No one is allowed to insult you but me.”

“Thank you, that’s very sweet.”

“I know. You’re welcome.”


	92. Chapter 92

The boot is an old world thing with no shoelaces abandoned to the side of a shed leaning precariously to the right. Yunho swears it conceals an underground network of burrow holes where at least one mouse and one overweight blind mole live in luxury. 

“I have to say, your plan really sucks.” Hongjoong tells him when Yunho tries to push him into the upturned shoe. “Can’t I just come with you?”

“The plot might not advance without you playing this part, hyung. We’re probably better off playing it safe. Plus, you’ll be hidden from that cornbag underground.” Yunho rests their foreheads together. “You  _ got _ this. I have a few guesses where the Vale could be and then I’ll be back in no time at all, I promise.”

Yunho flies off without a backward glance. Hongjoong watches him until his body fades into the background, a pinprick of movement in the sky, and tries not to let the worry get the best of him.

Like Yunho guessed, the field mouse  _ does _ live in the boot and welcomes him in with open arms. She spends hours teaching him the best places to find grain and work, folds out an old cotton pad for him to use as a cot to sleep in. Down here in the tunnels Hongjoong has no visual on the skyline, but based on the strobing sun and shadow filtering in through a hole in the topmost chamber he’s fairly certain weeks are passing. 

Months. 

And Yunho is nowhere to be found.


	93. Chapter 93

Hongjoong falls asleep only once in his time below ground—a two hour stress nap because there’s been no sign of Yunho and he’s getting antsy—and is greeted by the field mouse grinning sweetly down at him.

“Thumbelina, I have someone I’d like you to meet,” she coos at him. “He’s a wonderful gentleman with a lot of wealth.”

Hongjoong sighs. Here they go, time to meet the latest in his long line of suitors and hope for the best. Field Mouse drapes a cutaway edge of an old doily around his shoulders, shoves a basket of fresh baked goods into his hands, and troops him down and down into an almost endless pit. It ends at a den lit by candles and he’s introduced to the Mole, a beady eyed monster that starts salivating at Hongjoong’s appearance. 

He really hopes it’s because of the bread basket.

The first meeting is disturbing enough, so Hongjoong folds as many layers of old scarf as he can find to conceal his body from view. To them he was Thumbelina, a tiny powerless thing with a voice that could clear winter and he was not about to give the mole any opportunity to test his mettle. 

For their second meeting, after the light and shadow rave party through the single opening to the outside world, Mouse tells him the mole wants to show him a secret he’d found in his treasure trove.


	94. Chapter 94

“All that glitters finds its way into my vault,” Mole simpers at him. His voice comes out thick and the sound of his jowls flapping is fucking nauseating. “Rubies, pearls, emeralds, gold—whatever your heart could desire.”

“Cool.” Hongjoong tries to sound enthused.

The moles halts their progress through the maze of tunnels to hold his free hand between two paws. “Thumbelina, what I’m trying to say is that I would be...very happy if you would consider becoming my wife. You would want for _ nothing _.”

“Yes, Thumbelina, accept the offer,” the field mouse says encouragingly. “Mr. Mole would be able to set you up for life.”

“I’ll think about it,” Hongjoong snatches his hand away. “What did you want to show me?”

The mole and the mouse exchange a look before the mole sighs deeply and leads the way deeper into his vault of treasure.

“Ah, I happened upon this poor fellow that fell through the roof a few days ago.” The mole sniffs like he’s offended by the very notion of anyone touching his gold and gemstones. “We’ll have to get him removed in time for the wedding should it start stinking up the place.”

Hongjoong barely hears them, barely understands the words falling out of the gross animal’s mouth because in front of them, crumpled into a heap on the dirt floor… 

It’s Yunho.

It’s Yunho and there’s red on the ground.


	95. Chapter 95

Hongjoong shakily makes his way toward the heap of bent feathers hoping against hope that this bird isn’t  _ his _ bird. He barely touches the tip of a wing. “Yunho?”

In the background he can hear the mole and the mouse whispering together. They coo about his voice, how sweet he is to worry about another being so obviously dead and aren’t his emotions adorable?

“Yunho, hey. Come on, man, you can’t do this to me. Wake up.” Hongjoong lets the whitenoise of his blood pulsing hot and fast in his ears drown out the sound of the idiots behind him. “You were supposed to come right back, what is this? Get up!”

Yunho remains unmoving. Unaffected. Possibly dead.

Hongjoong falls against his chest with a wail that feels torn from his throat.


	96. Chapter 96

Mr. Mole and the field mouse both take their leave while Hongjoong sobs incoherent little half phrases into Yunho’s chest. How stupid he is, how much Hongjoong hates him, how none of this can be really real and Yunho has to be playing a dirty fucking trick.

Yunho sucks in a breath.

Hongjoong rises with his chest and nearly shits himself in relief. “Yunho!”   


Yunho coughs. “H-hyung I—ow…”

“Oh my god, you’re actually alive,” Hongjoong shushes him. “I’m so happy I could kiss you.”

“Please,” Yunho wheezes at him.

Hongjoong laughs at him, ecstatic, would laugh harder if Yunho had finished out the ‘please don’t’ he was always so quick to trot out in the dorms. “What can I do? Where does it hurt?”

“There’s a thorn,” Yunho says with a wince. His wing makes an abortive jerking motion as Yunho tries to point out the thorn, a giant floral spike protruding out both sides of his wing. “Yank it out for me, I don’t have the thumbs.”

Hongjoong does. 

It slides free easily, like it was lodged only barely through the feathers, and Yunho hides his face in Hongjoong’s stomach to conceal his cries. Hongjoong does his best to comfort him, rocks the bulk of his body back and forth while cooing nonsense.

“I really am so glad you’re alive you big idiot.”

“Screw you. Seriously.” Yunho whimpers back without bite.


	97. Chapter 97

“Where are you bleeding from?” Hongjoong finally finds the courage to ask. “We should get that cleaned up…”

“I’m not bleeding. I ran into a berry patch and got a bunch of juice all over me.” Yunho flexes his previously thorn’d wing. “On a lighter note, I’m pretty sure I found the Vale.”

“Yeah? Where is it?”

“It’s just a bramble patch on the side of the old lady’s cottage.” Hongjoong watches Yunho crack his neck with a twist and does his best to help roll Yunho upright. Yunho thanks him with a nuzzle of his beak against his cheek. 

Hongjoong bites his thumb nail. “That’s it? Just a patch of weeds next to a house.”

“As far as I can tell, yeah. The world here isn’t very big once you get to the edge of the stream or a few hundred feet from the house everything goes white.” Yunho stands to his full height, fully recovered and ready to fly. “Want to try it?”

Hongjoong groans, “I guess.” 

Unfortunately, the field mouse decides to come back at that exact moment to bodily haul Hongjoong away to her old dressing room. He motions for Yunho to meet him topside with a point of his arm to the ceiling and Yunho sends him a brief nod. “Thumbelina, you really must marry Mr. Mole. He has anything and everything you could ever need and he’s agreed to pay me a handsome fee for his— _ your _ happiness.”

“If that’s what’s best,” Hongjoong says and allows the mouse to fawn over him by weaving him a dress made of lace and pearls. It’s the same scene from his dream, though this time Hongjoong doesn’t panic now that he knows Yunho is alive and well, still a bird, and not bleeding out all over the bottom step of a dirt stairwell.


	98. Chapter 98

The wedding happens incredibly fast. Apparently while Hongjoong was busy crying over his seemingly dead friend, Mr. Mole and the field mouse were well underway with the preparations and sending out invitations and setting up decorations. By the time Field Mouse has him decked out to her satisfaction, Hongjoong is already being swept away to start the procession down the aisle since time means nothing and everyone in this place wants to get married yesterday.

“Uh, I think maybe I should go powder my nose or something,” Hongjoong tries to weasel his way out of the wedding. Field Mouse ignores him to tap his feet forward down the center aisle. 

“Not going to work on me, honey,” she tells him. “I’m escorting you to the altar and that’s that.”

“Of course you are.”

Three quarters of the way to standing in front of his would-be betrothed and the possum priest, a commotion erupts behind him.  
  
“She belong to _ me _!” Screamed from a garbled croaking voice.

"Kim Hongjoong!" Yelled by his least favorite suitor.

He only just resists the urge to slam his head against the nearest flat surface.


	99. Chapter 99

While the prince and Grundel tussle over who has the most claim to his hand in marriage, Hongjoong takes the opportunity to use the distraction to his advantage. He sidesteps most of the fighting to run full speed up the small mountain of dirt leading to the outside world at the heel of the boot. He's almost made it out when his leg gets pulled out from under him by the truly disgusting tongue of the toad man.

"Thumbelina," he slurs around his tongue. "You marry _me_!"

"Marry yourself," Hongjoong screeches back and starts throwing handfuls of dirt and lace and pearls at the toad's face until the grip of his tongue slackens enough for Hongjoong to rip his foot free. "And start respecting women!"

Yunho's wonderful bird head pops up over the hole Hongjoong is trying to climb out of and he reaches both wings deep into the opening. "Hyung! Grab my wings and I'll pull you out!" Hongjoong doesn't need to be told twice. It's a little disconcerting to grab fistfuls of feathers that give way beneath his fingers, but Yunho doesn't seem to mind—or at least doesn't seem to care—and yanks Hongjoong up and out before any of the wannabe zoo can grab and pull him back down. 

"Let's blow this popsicle stand," Yunho merrily chirps at him and grips his arms in his feet again to fly them in the direction of the cottage. 

"How _old_ are you," Hongjoong laughs. "I didn't realize we were back in the fifties."

"I had a thorn through my arm like twenty minutes ago, cut me some slack." Yunho gripes. It's a sobering thought and whatever joke Hongjoong was about to make gets swept away by the shivery aftershocks of seeing his dongsaeng so visibly near death. They alight on the most thorn-free branch in the entire bramble and Hongjoong has to pinwheel his arms to keep from overbalancing.

"Hey, Yunho?"

"What's up?"

"Thank you," Hongjoong starts. Stops. Continues, "For not dying on me, I really appreciate it."

"Anytime." Yunho's eyes squint closed, almost the same movement he pulls when he grins back home, and it's so reminiscent of home that Hongjoong can't resist the urge to lean over and press a kiss to his cheek and the very corner of his beak.

The bramble patch vanishes.


	100. Chapter 100

“Tell me that didn’t just work.” Yunho says in a monotone beside him.

“Why did kissing you work? I thought it was about kissing the prince,” Hongjoong asks, staring into the middle distance and refusing to make eye contact with Yunho who may or may not still be a bird.

“It was supposed to! I was just the _ bird_!”

“I know you were the bird!” Hongjoong pulls his shirt up and over his nose to help cover the bright embarrassed flush he can feel overtaking his cheeks. “What the fuck kind of fairy tale bullshit is happening! This is so stupid—”

“Oh,” Yunho squeaks.

“How are we supposed to solve these things and go home if we’re—”

“Hyung,” Yunho tries to interrupt him again but Hongjoong barrels on.

“—stuck in places where the story doesn’t even mean anything!”

“Hongjoong!”

The combination of Yunho’s forceful voice and the disrespect snaps him out of it. “What?”

“We look like ourselves again.”

“Oh.” Hongjoong blinks. It doesn’t smell like it, but—“Korea?”

“No.” Yunho pulls Hongjoong’s shirt away from his face and makes him finally take in the small, circular room they’ve switched to now. Yunho points at something behind him. “Rapunzel.”

There, in a tall mirror placed against the wall, Hongjoong sees a mirror image of himself with an impossibly long fall of hair. 

Yunho starts cackling like an asshole. “I wish your phone worked so I could take a picture for Yeosang. He’d _ love _ this!”


	101. Chapter 101

Hongjoong grips at his head. Sure enough, his hair is thick and long, and when he runs his fingers down towards his shoulders, the tendrils get caught up in his fingers. Yunho continues to laugh beside him.

"I don't know what you think is so funny," Hongjoong mutters. "It's just _hair_."

"It's like the longest mullet I've ever _seen_ and it's _hilarious_," Yunho says between giggles. "Oh my god, my stomach hurts."

And, well, true. The hair doesn't so much cover all of his head as much as it collects around the base of his neck--a huge waterfall mullet that Yeosang would probably cry tears of joy over. Or hatred. Honestly it was hard to tell with that boy. Hongjoong scowls. "Alright, if I'm Rapunzel this go around then what does that make you? The prince?"

Yunho stops laughing long enough to shrug, wiping away the tears that had gathered along his eyelashes from mirth. "Dunno, maybe. Wanna kiss me and find out?"

Hongjoong opens his mouth to yell at him, or tell Yunho _yes_ like an idiot, before they're interrupted by the sound of a crash and a person screeching.


	102. Chapter 102

They glance at each other uneasily. 

Behind them is a set of stairs that wind around the circular room to an open window near the ceiling and another set that disappears into darkness leading toward the base of the tower. As far as hiding spots go, there are relatively few save for a beaten up wardrobe and a bed lifted high off the ground. It would be pathetically easy to spot either one of them if they tried to hide underneath it.

Hongjoong reaches blindly for one of Yunho’s hands, keeping his eyes on the steps leading down. “Was that a bad scream or a good scream?”

Yunho holds his fingers in a vice grip. “No idea. Not sure I want to find out either.”

Steps, like someone carefully picking their way up a darkened wooden staircase, begin echoing up from the base of the tower. 

“Okay, so, I’m Rapunzel,” Hongjoong works through in a panic, “Then that means I’m the only one supposed to be here and you shouldn’t.”

Yunho gulps loud. “Right.”

“Then we need to hide you, like, _ now_.”

The wardrobe stands on rickety looking legs, Hongjoong can only hope it’s sturdy enough to support a grown man hiding in it without crumbling to pieces. Whoever it is that’s coming up is quickening their pace. Hongjoong shoves Yunho desperately towards the furniture, arranging the coats and dresses they find there to better conceal him from view once Yunho squeezes himself into the limited space.

He’s just shutting the wardrobe doors when a familiar voice sighs behind him.

“Rapunzel, what have I told you about not cleaning the staircase while I am out gathering supplies? I nearly broke my neck tripping over one of your ridiculous art projects again.”

Hongjoong spins around with an excited, disbelieving gasp. “Wooyoung?”


End file.
